Birthday at The Fat Prince


For my birthday, my wife took me out to The Fat Prince, a Turkish restaurant round the corner from our flat. We got a bit lost and wandered past Korean wedding salons for a while, before fetching up outside the dark exterior of The Fat Prince.

I’m embarrassed to realise how long it’s been since I’ve had (good) Turkish food. I was eating a felafel and thinking “hmm, this tastes a bit strange” until I realised it tasted strange because it tasted of something, rather than just general roughage and potentially chickpeas.

They kept serving me halloumi kebabs on pita breads. This is basically a cheese taco, imagined by a Turk. Surely the most wonderful thing to start the year with. At some point they brought out the real heavy hitters: cauliflower, which by some miracle was delicious rather than the end of all hope and satisfaction.

The main thing I was concentrating on, of course, was booze. In particular, a lethal espresso martini served in a coffee cup, further confused by including chocolate and orange, so that it tasted exactly like a liquified Terry’s Chocolate Orange, except after three mouthfuls you couldn’t feel your face. Well, you’re only 41 once.

I had at least four drinks (according to the bar bill) there so it wasn’t in the best decision-making frame of mind that I agreed to go to Crackerjack for more gin, or to go on from there for more drinks at The Wall, Singapore’s priciest whisky bar. But again, who was I to make a decision? Onwards, ever upwards. Or downwards. Or at least onwards.


Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.