Of Questionable Morality Or Taste, Decadent

The total absence of food in my fridge yesterday drove me to have breakfast in the new café that's opened up on the corner of my street.

For some reason, the owners have chosen to name this place louche. Having double-checked with my good friend dictionary.com, I can state with confidence that louche means "of questionable morality or taste, decadent." And decadent means "in a state of decline or decay".

This is a pretty spicy set of connotations for what is essentially a slightly upmarket greasy spoon in the backwaters of Shepherd's Bush. You can tell it's slightly upmarket because it serves excellent coffee, and the clientele, to a man, yea even unto myself, were toting copies of the New Guardian.

In fact I didn't observe any questionable morality at all, unless the nice middle class toddlers waving gleefully at each other and throwing their Dads' credit cards around the floor were the product of illicit post-millennial liaisons that took place behind the impeccably gloss-painted, solid front doors of the bourgeois mansions in nearby Ashchurch Grove. Which is possible.

As far as "questionable taste" goes, well, the name is spelled with a lower-case "l", which, as any fule kno, is *so* 1990s. But on the other hand, the name doesn't appear anywhere on the frontage of the building, which is very Noughties. Although the usual reason for the absence of signage on fashionable drinking establishments is to prevent hoi polloi and other undesirables finding their way in and disrupting the non-stop celebrity coke-fest taking place in the confusingly black gloss-painted, black marble-floored toilets. I didn't investigate the toilets at all, but I'm pretty sure that this kind of thing wouldn't have been happening in there.

Thirdly, "in a state of decline or decay". There is a cheery school of thought, I forget which one, that says that everything enters into a state of decline from the moment of its creation. louche opened a week ago, so by existentialist standards it's well into its inevitable downward trajectory by now. So I'll give them that.

As to decay, I didn't notice any - the place is as spruce and spick and span as you would expect from a slightly upmarket greasy spoon with pleasing artworks on the walls, cheap but serviceable pine tables, excellent coffee and a pretty waitress with apple cheeks, bee-stung lips and more than a passing resemblance to Liv Tyler. Although I suppose there could have been the bodies of any number of rats, mice, grey squirrels, foxes etc. rotting away under the pleasingly reassuring stripped-pine floorboards.

louche, then. Almost certainly a misnomer. Excellent coffee, though.