I knew I hadn't dreamed this up.





Any forum members ever been there?

Here is a review I found on line of this place:

"Theres a clue in the name here. School dinners bar/restaurant, situated just round the corner from Farringdon tube station in London, is a great venue for your hen/stag/party night out. The theme, as you've guessed is being back at school and if you go there expecting to just have a good night out with your mates you will be dissapointed because you will be forced to have a great night out with everyone in attendance!

From the Eaten boys to the St Trinian girls, from the headmaster Mr R U Tuckman to the headmistress Mrs M E Bedworthy, the costumes and characters are all there and are all good at their roles. Cane in hand the headmaster will tolerate no misbehaving or food fights. Cross his path and you can expect 10 of the best whilst bent over the school desk!

The evening is very well put together. Arriving between 7 and 8 pm you will be inroduced to the other boys and girls and be issued with a name badge. The party atomsphere is there from the beginning and you will find everyone there is up for a real party. At about 9pm the headmaster will call you through for dinner and ensure everyone is seated with elbows off the table (or else you can expect to see the cane out again). The boys and girls will then take your orders - don't expect too much choice - this is school dinners after all, albeit bigger portions! Sausage and mash, toad in the hole or roast beef and yorshire pudding are the staples.

Dont go expecting a hearty meal either. The eating process is very protracted, each course being interspersed with the DJ spinning hits from the 70s and 80s and when half the guests take to the tables as their dance floor, eating certainly comes to a halt!

By the time dessert comes around, most, if not all, have drunk far more than they will wish to contemplate the next morning so most desert plates return to the kitchen untouched.

With plenty of entertainment from the DJ and guest comedians where audience participation is obligatory, no hen, stag or birthday boy/girl will escape th evening without a few humiliating tales broadcast to the intoxicated audience.

Drink prices are what you would expect from a central London bar - dont expect any change from a fiver per drink. Not to mention the £39.95 price of each ticket you would have paid in advance. The only other real drawback is its location. Its not particularly close to any other nightlife and actually looks a bit odd in a street full of offices, and shops. Kicking out time is midnight so most will want to party on after so expect a cab ride to your next location.

For a special night out its well worth a look. You need to go with at least six or seven mates to make it a good night. The venue holds about 150, but is really crammed at this capacity, especially when it comes to sitting down to eat. You certainly need to be in the mood for this sort of night and school uniform is required for full effect, although not strictly enforced. "

No,Headboy, you didn't dream it up.

Only an Englishman could come up with this!

We would probably also be the only race daft enough to attend it,too!

Probably ALSO being the country that pioneered school dinners helped, as did our dinner ladies' unrivalled ability to make any culinary ingredient taste exactly the same.

See what you missed by being born on the other side of the pond?


Steve M

I guessed as much,

DANNY

I also like the idea of SITTING down to eat after 10 strokes of the cane!

Unless they put something palliative or hallucigenic in the bangers and mash, of course!


Steve

Actually this School Dinners seems like a bit of fun! And for this Yank who is rather fascinated by your public school traditions, such play could be a bit interesting. <G>

Actually my favorite pub in London when we visited was The Nags Head.



Great bitters, but I didn't see anyone with a cane or even a plimsole...unfortunately. <G>

So tell me where exactly is Chatsworth Estate and what's the name of the pub where the Gallaghers hang out? <VBG> (I love the recommendation of the Daily Telegraph: Staggering bad taste...")

More information on this restaurant can be found on Page 21 of this Forum.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/198833/thread/1074531781/last-1076105678/School+Dinners+London

School Dinners was featured in one of those channel 4 documentaries years back. Don’t know if anyone recalls seeing it. Out there in the achieves somewhere.


A lot of adults in uniform rather the merrier for intake of alcohol . A couple of chaps being caned by scantily clad head girls, the strokes were delivered in very rapid succession in time to the thumping on tables and chanting, loud cheer at the end. Pants up or down can’t remember.

This must have been shown before the abolition of CP, guess early 90’s part of the programme featured in the study of a HM of private school, where after getting one of his pupils to deliver a manikin in full school uniform proceeded to give a demonstration on it, displaying his caning skills. There was also some hand caning at another location, if memory serves the interviewer offered to hold out his hand at some regret. .


Steve remember the Hammersmith Palais,
Never like this in our day, no CP on the premises but plenty of disco atmosphere with hits from the oldies and compulsory school uniform for entry,
www.schooldisco.com

Ketta

I think this is what you meant - this is really weird deja vue - because I just came across it this morning!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BVR3UswjHY

I have been as far as the front door!But then it ws situated in a seedy basement off Baker Street somewhere.
A few tawdry photos were exhibited in the alcove.As a veteran of umpteen spankingrecreationsal events I must say DinDins is a bit tame.
After all they are catering for office parties not SM punters.
Doubt there is trousers down BB whacking of guys still less of women
(secretary visitors)that is!
The jovial grinning its all funny symbolically beating an unwilling terrified childs arse black and blue and purple with welts I find highly sickening
and the humourous tone more in keeping with describing The Black and White Minstrel show as a representation of the "jolly good 'l days of Jim Crow slavery",
just a bit 'o fun really,or installing a coffee bar company called "Cafe Nero" inside St.James Christian church in Picadilly.We might as well open a Cafe Mein Kampf in the Central London Synagogue.We already send up fireworks celebrating the torture and execution of Guy Fox.

Georgiec, LOL---Only Michael Moore could do a report like this justice.

The best comment from Moore comes right after a demonstration on a dummy on how a schoolboy is caned. Moore says: "I gotta say though, why bother with this cane business here? Why not just give him a good punch in the nose. I mean, why not take a gun, shoot them in the foot and say, you know, that'll teach ya. I mean they'll remember that for months to come."

Very funny clip.

Bozo wrote: "The jovial grinning its all funny symbolically beating an unwilling terrified childs arse black and blue and purple with welts I find highly sickening
and the humourous tone more in keeping with describing The Black and White Minstrel show as a representation of the 'jolly good 'l days of Jim Crow slavery'..."

Absolutely! But as an outside observer there is a good deal of very black humor in watching the Old Boys and Girls live out the "good old days". I have talked to Old Boys who really didn't mind a good caning or black, blue and purple welts that they could display to their fellows with pride and I suppose it is these guys that take School Dinners as serious fun. Of course these are also the same guys who are devoid of empathy for the "unwilling, terrified child". I would have lasted about 1 day in one of those schools. I would have run away in terror or successfully plotted to murder the Head after my first, forced (because I would have needed to be held down---there would have been no acquiescent "bend and present" from me) caning.

Yes but this event sounds hideous!I have attended "normal"Civil Service Staff restaurant "parties"and THEY were dire enough.
A bunch of peep who hate each others guts from different salary levels all trying to be pally and talkative.
Surely an event like this where a small minority of guys who happen to have attended a caning (probably public?)school must be very "divisive"?What is the ordinary Joe or Mary thinking as they cavort about taking fake canings and enjoying it?
The strip bars of the City of London are already heavy with the macho sweat and overbearing dominant machismo of the drunken traders without this!
Im sorry but if I was at such an event I think I'd end up walkin' out!
I get the idea its a sort of attempt at a Playboy type Club but more down to earth.Theres little or no "hands on"action for the majority of diners who are forced to endure the immature showing off of a handful of whackos.