How not to Eat in Liffey Valley Shopping Centre

First of all, let me tell you this. I *hate* shopping. I mean really hate it. I prefer to decide what I want, leg it into town, buy it, and go home. I don't know how anyone can walk around for hours browsing at things. *Maybe* if it's an expensive item, I might look around to see if I can get a better price in another shop. But that's about as far as I like to go.

So Christmas comes around and I have to get presents for people. Now I am as bad at getting presents for people as I am at shopping, so not learning from past experience I think, "Dublin is a bigger city than Limerick - I'll find it easier to get something good up there". Biggest waste of time, by the way.

But at about 8:00 pm it's time to go home and I'm hungry, so I decide, time for dinner and I'll head home afterwards.

Before I continue I realise there are plenty of people with no food this Christmas - like any other - and that they would be delighted to have had the problems I did. Compared to them I accept I am very lucky. But speaking as an ordinary Christmas shopper, expecting a normal meal, I'm not so lucky

Now the way LVSC is laid out, is a big long main corridor with all the shops on both sides. The proper (well kind of proper) restaurants at are at one end, and at the other end and up the stairs is a kind of general sitting-down, eating area with the counters of some of the well-known fast-food joints built into the walls, and about 50m diameter circle between them, with tables and chairs and things where you can eat. Real airport stuff.

I head down to the end with proper food. As it happens I quite like Eddie Rockets' burgers, they really do a proper job of it. Lovely and juicy and plenty of meat, and other fillings. So, feet aching from walking around since 9:00 am that morning, I approach Eddie Rocket's place - it's a kind of 1950s American "diner" style layout, with a big STOP sign at the door in (!). But that's not going to stop me. What is going to stop me is a big queue about 20 people long, waiting outside! Yes these people are waiting for the eaters inside to finish, and leave their table.

Now I know there's no point in complaining about a queue to anyone that matters. If I say "I left because of a queue", Mr. Rocket will simply say, "There was a queue? Great!". To make it worth his while to take steps to deal with a queue, enough people would have to leave the queue that would have covered the cost of whatever steps he took to eliminate queuing.

So I head over to Spurs, another chain-restaurant (the only kind in this place) - a steak place. This too is stuffed to the gills. The queue is only five people long, but not moving at all. The people in front of me get seats eventually, and I am next. After about five minutes, your one approaches me and says, "she'll be with you in a minute". a few minutes later, I can't stand still any longer, so I thought - look all I want is something to eat so I can drive home to Limerick (the other side of the country). I'll just head up to the Burger King - because of all those dodgy burger places, their flame-grilled one with the bacon and cheese is probably the nicest.

So I trek to the other end of LVSC, hunger and foot aches getting stronger, and get escalated to the "food court" area. Only to see the burger king sign, "Coming Soon".

So I have to get one of lesser ones... It's a choice between McDonalds, KFC and Harry something or other which I never heard of, but has a much longer and slower-moving queue... Read on and you'll see why than the other two.

So not wanting that bloated feeling one usually gets from McDonalds' burgers, I decide KFC is the choice. The most appetising looking thing they have are these things called a "Zinger Burger" or something. Kind of Burger with a bit of lettuce, cheese and chicken and presumably mayonaise or something or other. I get to the front of the queue, and bring myself to say the word "Zinger" in public with a straight face, only to be told, "No burger buns". So a chicken salad it had to be. (with chips and pepsi or something).

I find a table and eventually sit down with relief to be off my feet, take everything off the tray and my coat off and over the back of my chair. I audibly sigh as the aches come away from my feet and back. Open the salad and chips. (The amount of chips is fairly pathetic, I might add at this point, it's the most "regular" sized bag I've seen in a long time). Then I discover, your one never put in one of those small white crappy bendy plastic forks with my dinner. I am a good 30 or 40 metres from the stall, (only table available) so I don't want to leave mys stuff there, lest it be cleaned or robbed, so I think, "Does it really matter?"... Take a look at the salad, yes it does.

So I pile everything back on the tray, put the coat back on, close the salad plastic thing, put the top back on the drink (which has trouble fitting), put my coat back on, drag myself to my feet, and head back over to the KFC wall-stall. Wait in what looks to be the shortest queue. I get to the front, and ask the girl there (a different one this time), for a fork.

No forks, she laughs with a sympathetic face (I'm assuming not at me, just at the whole thing of it). No point in asking for a bit of bread to put the salad in, as I know they've no buns. After a pointless attempt to express incredulity, I head back over to my seat which thankfully is still free, having to eat the with my hands. I decide not to put on the vinagrette and make my hands all slimy, leading to quite a dry chicken salad. Trying to eat a piece of chicken and salad at the same time is not easy with your hands and that's kind of the point in mixing them.

As for the chips. Now you know the chips you get in these places... KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, they're all the same. Scrawny little things about the thickness of a biro, and the length of, well a normal chip. But in this particular bag I got, I'd say, not more than 30 of these little things. Together with the forkless salad and the drink and the one sachet of salt, the whole thing came to €7.49! Abra-kebabra, all is forgiven.

I was nowhere near full when finishing, so I found myself going into the McDonald's queue, and buying a quarter-pounder with cheese. I can't really blame them for this, but I then had to head over to the bins and open the burger and take out the onions and gerkins, because those two foods are disgusting, getting funny looks off others, I stole some of their cleaning tissues to use on my hands, and headed home... Still feeling a bit unfulfilled, but there we go.

Now that I've typed all that I see it is quite a boring story, but I'm damned if I'm not going to post it after typing all that. But hopefully it will help other travellers to Dublin if they are looking for something to eat and are wondering whether to go to the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre. Or maybe it will help LVSC themselves and they read it and decide to put a proper chipper in there. Forks, burger buns, decent chips and all.