The Big Apple, a cheery pie and pasta eatery, offers two treats for the homesick Brit: Cadbury's flake, a chocolate log which occasioned some of the naughtiest ads aired on British TV, and Hello magazine, whose pages are splattered with the homes and cosmetically-improved faces of the rich and famous.
For these alone the restaurant is worth hunting out, but it has other delights: a daytime bar which invariably looks a little seedy during the daylight hours, remarkably efficient service, and enticingly-named sandwiches.
Fast service married to cheap price tags means you cannot expect the food to be great. Where microwaves rule, taste seldom lingers.
Thus chicken pie makes use of the brown meat, and binds it up in a salty white glue-like substance. A few strips of celery serve as vegetable. Vegetarian lasagne is not all rich roasted peppers and aubergine blanketed in pasta, but cheaper carrot and broccoli.
The wittily-named sandwiches, available to take away, are rather less inspirational than the names suggest: and is it the incompatibility of turkey and ham with cranberry sauce, mustard and mayonnaise that suggested the label 'Sonny and Cher'? Sweetmeats are disappointing, with dull pastry on a solid apple pie and dry, crumbly chocolate cake. The banana cake is better.
But it is a cheery, buzzy place to meet for lunch, all coloured chalks and blackboards. Two will easily escape for $300, and for that there is the chance to indulge in real British pub dishes like shepherd's pie or ploughman's lunch.
