If you wake up before you dream, what’s the difference?

The slave admires the tyrant because the last is what the first would be.

"He surveys himself all over in the glass of royalty. The swelling bloated self-importance of the one is the very counter-part and ultimate goal of the abject servility of the other. But both hate mankind for the same reason. because a respect for humanity is a diversion to their inordinate self-love, and the idea of the general good is a check to the gross intemperance of passion."

As we wind down 2022, a year I think everyone but the utility and gas companies will remember as one of the worst in their lifetimes, let us abandon the trappings of rote behaviour and surrender to WHIMSY, not for the spark of joy that might illumine those pitch-hued corridors of your guarded hearts but as an experiment to test the strength of those bonds forged by that which is stronger than twined steel and more steadfast than the mightiest of ancient oaks: FLAVOUR. Perchance the flavour of a cauliflower hash brown bun, whose yielding dough and alarmingly savoury layer of chilli crisp mayo surrender to the pressure of your grinning jaws and yield up their crispy, well-seasoned bounty. Maybe to the flavour of numbing Sichuan noodles whose hidden cashews proivide a rich textural contrast to the soft, pork-dappled noodles atop them. Does the flavour of kedgeree that you can hold in your hand do more to move the blood through your sluggish veins? How about the spicy crackle and finger-staining bliss of a salt & chilli aubergine?

Regardless, all of these are valid possibilities at one of Nanika's famous MYSTERY SALES.

And a MYSTERY SALE is all we are doing tonight because Cilijn is away to a funeral and I am too overburdened to run the whole place by myself, but still have to run the whole place by myself because there are so many bills to pay and no other way to pay them! That's the joy of being alive right now! Inflated bills from companies that are absolutely rolling in money! Corporate interests that threaten to sue the government if they try to cap their greed! Amazing! You have to marvel at the illusion that anyone else is actually in charge of the country!

So come on down (or call; you can and probably should call ahead) to Nanika and get yourself a bag of WHIMSY, containing one main, one bun, and two sides for only £16.00! That's it! That's all we're selling! And you don't know what's in it, just that it's food, and that it's good! That's the MYSTERY!

ETC!

De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio.

I am really struggling to stay afloat, either financially or emotionally. If it were possible to take a day off we would not be open tonight, nor this entire understaffed weekend, but I am forced to not only work but work fourteen or fifteen hour days at an untenable pace so you should probably buy some katsu, etc since it is there and in need of purchase.

Speaking of needing purchase, have you seen society's collective fingers desperately seeking some as we all slide merrily into the abyss of our own complacent acceptance of moral bankruptcy? I can't quite figure out why we're struggling against what we so obviously allowed to happen, both in insidious, small ways and in blindingly bright explosions of stupidity whose afterimages have yet to fade. It would be fascinating, if we could afford the illumination necessary to examine it.

So come on down to our Cilijn-less weekend of migraines and merriment. We can briefly discuss my birthday, which was very eventful in comparison to my usual complete lack of social activity. You will have to speak loudly, though. In my advanced years it becomes harder and harder to hear you.

Poultry providers for poverty prisoners.

"How matter presses on me! what stubborn things are facts! How inexhaustible are nature and art!"

Despite an exhausting week of melancholia and mild injury it is time once again to feed you, the eight people who read this thing (and the two hundred who have no idea it exists but see the lights on and are drawn to them like moths with debit cards). We have all the things on the menu so you don't have to keep asking. We are not one of those hipster places that run out of their shit every shift and open whenever they feel like it. We are the place that has been here for five years and has always adhered to its opening hours, and I have tried to never run out of anything unless it is a special, which by its very nature would be a limited item and subject to the whims of fate and scarcity.

Speaking of specials, they are the same as last week, with the caveat that the Red Chicken Curry is actually on the menu full-time but has been omitted from the printed version because of my own failings as a menu-artist. We have so much Red Curry. Please buy it. We need the space for other foods.

The only thing that was neither painful nor disappointing between Saturday night and Thursday morning was watching Tár, starring Cate Blanchett, twice (and also Three Days of the Condor starring Faye Dunaway, the Cate Blanchett of the 1970s, once). Tár is phenomoenal, and you should watch it, twice.

So when you have finished with that, or if you find yourself peckish at some point during its expansive yet very engrossing runtime, there is a little bun shack/noodle hut just at the end of Victoria Road which for some bizarre reason has dynamite (and huge) cannoli for like ... £3.50. Come grab some dinner, and lift my sunken spirits with your presence as I lift yours with pork mince.

You got any good dishwashing music? I got like ... a hundred tubs I need to get through.

Következő!

It is amazing what not working 9 am to 10pm four days a week and another 20 hours on the "off" days will do for one's productivity. NANIKA is all cleaned up and fully stocked (save for some spring onions, the eternal job, the bane of our existence, etc), I have run something like 35km in the past eight days, and after 704 consecutive mornings I have finally finished the Hungarian Duolingo course (although I still cannot speak/read anything more complicated than a children's book, and not a very good children's book at that). And now it is time to once again fire up the pasta boiler and sharpen the cleavers to provide you, the few remaining people who can afford to live in the south side, the katsu and/or noodles you have so long been without.

It does occur to me that it is mid-November, which means that there is only a month or so before we have to close for Christmas holidays. I was hoping to get some dinner parties happening, but that's not a lot of time, and you will likely be even more broke than usual this holiday season due to the almost pathological greed of the energy companies and the completely fabricated helplessness of our laughably inept leaders to stop their donors from literally killing the electorate. Woooooooohooooo! Perhaps we'll squeeze one in. Keep an eye on this space for details.

I hope you all remember the drill. Phone line opens at 3pm. You call, order, and select a time between 5pm and 9pm to collect your dinner. We get you as close to that time as possible. You arrive and pay the person who is not covered in sauce and oil burns, and he/she hands you your bag of hot food with a pleasant smile and some sort of chat (and maybe even eye contact, a completely unheard-of experience in this neighbourhood). Rinse, repeat. First call, first to get a slot. The later you call, the longer you might have to wait, depending on what you want and how busy we are. Then again, maybe we can squeeze you in quickly. Who knows. It's a crapshoot. Walk-ups are also welcome, although much like the previous scenario it is possible you will have to go for a walk and come back later. Or go to the Star Bar and grab a beer. Or sit in your car and have a wank. Whatever floats your boat. It's your life. I just work here.

See you soon, Govanhill and surrounding area residents. Thursday to Saturday, back under the extractor, deaf and crying, where I belong.

Get a touch of class this Thursday.

It was a gamble; it was a risk.

R.I.P. O.B. 2

As I was trundling some very important elements from the former bun shack to the former (former) bun shack in preparation for its re-opening I was struck by a wave of sadness. OnlyBuns was very, very cute, and it is always sad to see cute things disappear. So let us once again watch a small video made by Mark, who managed to capture one bit of one night's worth of its cuteness (and set it to the soothing sounds of Pill, who we miss almost as much as we miss OnlyBuns).


Thankfully, all of the food items glimpsed in these brief scenes will be available once again starting November 10th, three whole blocks up the road from the depressing husk of a once-adorable idea. Plus there will be noodles and stuff. And pork mince. And mapo tofu. And probably Saigon salad, etc. And Cilijn will be there too, in an apron with a tea towel so she can do the aggressive hand slap that removes 99% of stubborn furikake from one's fingers, so your buns will still be in good (clean) hands.

There is a lot of prep required to get this old hunk of noodle bar up and running again. Also, it needs the internet to run the basement sex dungeon Spotify playlist that one of our Chechen dominatrices playfully titled "slappers" (plus the air fresheners down there are on a digital timer that comes with a super helpful app you can access from your phone), so it will be next Thursday, the 10th of November, before you can stampede to your/our old stomping grounds and fill bag after bag with Chicken Katsu and steaming Sichuan Noodles. Meanwhile, the children and I will be hard at work testing fuses and selling cocaine to ensure that everything is tip-top and ready to go for your arrival. Any specials will be announced slightly before we reopen, but the full menu is available somewhere below this post in another idiotic post I made earlier.

See you soon, back where we belong.

We are experiencing higher than usual call volumes.

Please stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly.

Their fingers scrabble for purchase as the earth yaws, but find little in the smooth and ergonomic lines of their illuminated keyboards.

It is unlikely that we will be open this weekend, given the staggering amount of food that needs to be prepared. I had forgotten how big the actual Nanika menu is. There are hundreds of tubs crowding every conceivable horizontal surface, currently empty but destined to hold various sauces, pickled vegetables, meat mince, noodles, vegetables, and powders. Just an absurd amount of tubs. They're like ... everywhere. So we will begin prep tomorrow, and work through Thursday night. If it seems feasible to open on Friday then we will. If not, we will possibly do a Sunday night trial run for the newbies, or just patch it until next weekend when we can properly serve you, all tubs and hands on deck.

That is the tentative re-opening menu. As always, something will be unavailable along the supply chain, an electrical appliance will explode, or or someone will trip and spill a 25 liter tub of noodles down The Hole to form some sort of Tim Burton-esque art project, necessitating last-minute alterations to the available offerings, but it will definitely hew along these lines. And, as we are incapable of doing less when MORE is an option, there will be specials as well, which we will post in due course.

This weekend or next. Keep an eye on this here space for details.