At the Café Olé you can get crème brulée
with a crust so robust you could skate on it.
Their seafood ragôut they serve red, white and blue,
with a Prince-of-Wales biscuit to grate on it.
They’ve mustard & cress, but their custard’s a mess;
you would think it was made by a horse.
But the dish I like most is their ‘jelly on toast’,
which they swamp with a yummy rum sauce.
At the Cafe Olé you can order today
your cauliflower soup for next year,
But sadly somehow if you want the stuff now
you can just go and whistle, I fear.
The management hope that the tables all slope
so the food will end up on the floor,
when a labrador pup comes and gobbles it up,
then performs a quick dance to get more.
At the Café Olé, though you don’t have to pay,
you do have to smile – they insist!
If you’re sullen or pout, they will bundle you out,
then they enter your name on a list.
And if you go back they will chide you and smack
you with rhubarb or celery stalks.
And, whether you mind or not, you will find
yourself taking the puppy for walks.
At the Café Olé – I am sorry to say –
that, whenever his ‘Roux’ isn’t thickening,
the chef has recourse (when he’s making a sauce)
to practices you would find sickening.
The waitresses may sometimes carry a tray
but you’ll find that more often they’re dropping ’em.
They like to have fun throwing fruit or a bun –
once they start this there’s no hope of stopping ’em.
At the Café Olé they go out of their way
to prevent people feeling at ease.
While you sit there for hours admiring the flowers
the staff come and go as they please.
The sight of some bloke (with a globe artichoke
impaled in his throat) turning blue –
they will greet with a shout, handing camcorders out,
and tip more artichokes in the stew!
At the Café Olé they do things their own way –
such behaviour’s unheard of in France.
The chef cannot cook but you still have to book –
oh – at least seven months in advance.
It’s their dandelion juice and the tireless abuse
that have made it the top spot in town.
So hurry along before something goes wrong
and you find that they’ve closed the place down!
John Barclay