Simon is a friend of my flatmate who deals in money and wears chinos, enjoys croquet and likes girls. He joined me for a chicken burger for lunch on Saturday at Floriditas, and over Peroni and Bubbles we talked burgers and women. 

Once we’d gotten over the fact that even though the ultimate purpose of the date was a blog post, and Simon still refused to have his photo taken, he relaxed and sat back and was, on the whole, a little bit charming. Although 5 minutes late, he did have the foresight to text and let me know that Saturday traffic was going to hold him up a good ten minutes beforehand. 

We were sat by the window; a busy Cuba St Saturday meant that we were both spotted by no less than 5 people we knew. He had the good humour to laugh about it, through tales of his recent sailing trip to Croatia and a little bit of getting to know each other. The bubbles helped things along.

He managed to relax enough into some good chats about flings and dates and girls, but the conversation was overwhelmingly punctuated by one suavely delivered phrase:

“That was off the record!”

Sometimes it featured bonus expletives preceding the “off” and a couple of times there was physical movement forwards complete with a pointy finger in my face. 

The burger was touted as thyme and parmesan-crumbed free range chicken, with crisp iceberg lettuce and chimichurri yoghurt. I didn’t note any yoghurt type dressing, and found the accompanying condiment more like a salsa verde. Very tasty though; simple and true to Floriditas’ style. The bun was a real winner and this was a hands-only affair; no knife and fork required.  

The chicken I found a little salty, but it was nice and crisp like a schnitzel and it retained both it’s moisture and a tasty flavour. Simon was impressed by the size and argued that a McChicken is the perfect pick-up-able burger size.  

With nearly everything being off the record I sat there a little dizzy with the power of what I may or may not do online bring his ego down a peg or two; something he confessed could probably do with happening. The slight fear shown, and the right of veto which was requested, meant the lunch was doubly entertaining; and I think we’ve already established that laughter in dating is fundamental.

He paid the bill, kissed me on the cheek goodbye, offered me a ride home and thanked me the next day. I didn’t quite feel like just another statistic, and I even ended up actually enjoying lunch a lot more than I expected.       

The vital stats:

This simple but tasty burger got a 7/10 from Simon. And the date? About the same. I’ll give it a 7.5/10 because of the highly entertaining off-the-record stories and the text messages which followed post-date and pre-publication.     

Thanks Simon for being date#10 and sort-of a good sport, and for a delightful hungover lunch. And wonderful attentive service at Floriditas as usual.