MANY YEARS AGO, I used to visit Yugoslavia frequently. I stayed with friends in both Sarajevo and Belgrade. During almost every stay in Belgrade, several friends and I used to travel to the town of Novi Sad to eat good Chinese food in a restaurant called Szećuan. We used to order, and consume everything on its menu. This food was washed down with copious amounts of alcohol.

After one if these boozy lunches, we began walking to the railway station and as we passed a pub called Bar London, my friend Miša said to me:
“It would be surrealist if you take us for a drink in this bar”.
We had one or more ‘for the road’, and then staggered towards the station.

This memory was aroused by coming across the Restaurante Londres in central Funchal (Madeira). We ate dinner there. The food was excellent. For the first time in my life, I ate limpets. These aquatic snails were grilled in their shells with butter and garlic – they tasted wonderful. The other dishes we tried were so good that we have booked there again.

Returning to the past, if I recall correctly, there was also a restaurant or bar called London in central Belgrade, but oddly I never entered it.