You can always get a table here
There’s a restaurant in Skipton, North Yorks, called Calico Jacks, and I am obsessed with it though I have never dined there for fear of shattering the spell. While it is also cajun/pirate themed, it bears no relation to the imaginary Sheffield business, Calico Jaxx.
To the best of my recollection, when I was a youth, Calico Jacks housed a scooter shop selling Vespas and that.
I am concerned by the prospect of “Fishman Fridays”. I’m not sure how Desmond might be involved in restaurant meals, but no interpretation I can come up with is comforting.
Just enough time to clean up for Des Mondays.
Oh, very good.
15% off the Fishman & Chips platter all night long!
I would not want Des involved at any point in the production of my meal. And that’s the least unpalatable option!
Just remember that Des is poisonous.
It’s a weird Japanese custom known as Desutaimori.
I didn’t think anything could beat those monkeys til I saw… Friday is WHAT now?!
I want to eat at a place now that looks like that so bad…
One of our favorite restaurants here in Atlanta was the late lamented Dante’s Down the Hatch, a high end fondue restaurant which was not pirate themed per se, but which did have a galleon inside it, in (literally) alligator-infested waters, with a live jazz combo on the deck of the boat.
The ship caught fire and burned down one night after closing (basically gutted the entire interior of the building), but fortunately the alligators were safe.
No zip lines, though
Ocean City has Dead Freddies’ which is pirate themed but family-friendly.
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=52644926a031314b&q=dead+freddies+island+grill+ocean+city+restaurant+pirate&uds=ADvngMjcH0KdF7qGWtwTBrP0nt7d_7RqdfAqkYTKsVekBq4gSaUtDt58YdIzsxuWzCW_XxNZmvrTijs4TAsAV4_znTkk8H4aKckIbHpfHReOsiQgQRRHaJ0ZCdQBDXd8rsUZChsDpKZSEtTq6PqcyOL60yZDT-mD6MnEAcmr_Ui0Z_4RIuFiJlqwb5UxuFFtXcyiFCA_YG8O&udm=2&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVnbOolrmJAxXtrokEHQJvNh4QxKsJegQIDRAB&ictx=0&biw=1515&bih=1192&dpr=1
Amstragram is of course a reference to Amstrad, a defunct British tech company by Baron Alan Sugar which apparently still exists in the Tackleverse.
I mean, defunct makes it sounds like it failed. But from what I can see on wikipedia it was just folded into the operations of Sky. A corporation I know well, because Sky digi-box was the punchline to a Mitchell and Webb Look sketch.
It also sounds very much like am stram gram, which is a French children’s counting out rhyme, kind of like eeny meeny minie moe except all words are nonsense. (Probably derived from some sort of Old Frankish/Germanic thing.)
That’s where my mind went!
Ah! Memories of the Amstrad PCW 8256 I wrote most of my high school essays on! The single game available for it was Trivial Pursuit and it had maybe 100 questions programed in so after a few goes you could memorise them and beat all your mates.
The historical pirate “Calico Jack” Rackham is probably best known for having had two female pirates among his crew- Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Anne Bonny tends to be the better known of the two- I suspect it’s because she had the more piratical name.
OTOH, Mary Read has a feminist bookstore named after her here in Madrid, because she had a great name for a bookstore.
Both were captured along with Calico Jack, but escaped execution (though not prison) by “pleading the belly”.
I was actually just watching Black Sails before I came here. Can’t wait to see how the restaurant presents high seas piracy in the form of cajun cuisine.
I have just been reading about them in The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order. Weird coincidence!
Oh my! What must the other 411 LottieGrotes be doing?
The best I can do with “412” is a near Azealia Banks reference
It’s one of the telephone area codes for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
I don’t think nearly enough restaurants have ziplines.
I am concerned as to how northern English restaurants interpret Cajun cuisine. Have they ever even seen an andouille sausage? Can they identify okra at all?
I think I can speak for everyone when I say that Amstragram is just peak literature, and John deserves all the awards just for that. We good? We good.
I am finishing my first draft of a letter to the Nobel committee just now.
Uh oh, while Mildew’s clown-washing is much diminished it looks like a new pirate-kick is taking over. Needless to say, she Lottie and Claire would all make excellent pirates.
Mildred’s eyes have become transcendentally elfin.
Such is the wistful life of the clown.
I wonder if Mildred is still following her parents’ lentil and no chocolate diet.
If she is, I suspect she’ll go hungry at Calico Jaxx.
Mildred didn’t even stick to that during Bad Machinery. Her very first interaction with the other girls was cadging Lottie’s chocolate off her in exchange for information about Amy. Last story we saw her in, she was chowing down on shwarma.
I hope there’s a Cajun band on. Cajun music is the best kind of music. It’s the funnest music.
There might be a Cajun playlist on…
Yes! Followed closely by Klezmer
And Zydeco!
Also I wonder if Calico Jaxx has a Mighty Rad Gumbo on the menu.
I thought Zydeco was what Steve meant by Cajun music
My that Calico Jack website is really something isn’t it?
Are the monkeys statues, animatronics, or just extremely hairy customers?
Or local Sheffield wildlife?
This Calico Jaxx looks like a restaurant i would be obsessed too. Nice atmosfere and decorations, the zip line is genius! But that Fishman Friday make me worry, exactly like that bot.
As of 2018, when I last lived in Seattle, there were at least three establishments which incorporated elements of what we see here at Calico Jaxx. One of them, while not having a zip line, is in the same building as a merry-go-round with vertically oscillating horses and bright lights, as is tradition.
“Captain Black’s” is more of a bar than a restaurant, but Seattle requires all bars to serve good, and CB’s serves chicken on waffles and it is delicious. “The Crab Pot” is more crab-themed than anything, but has lots of kitschy decorations which would fit in at Calico Jaxx. I can’t find the third one, which makes me think it has changed hands and re-named or something, but I’m sure there are many others given how steeped the Pacific Northwest is in sailing culture and non-local food. At the moment there appear to be at least a dozen place matching “creole restaurant” in the greater Seattle area on Google Maps.
And I too, despite not being a seafood enjoyer in general, find no small glee in this style of establishment.
Chicken and waffles is a Southern staple. Every place that does breakfast/brunch here has chicken and waffles (which my wife gets every time) and shrimp and grits (which I get a lot of the time) on the menu.
I spent a good chunk of my life in the Southern US some decades ago, and while I do have a longish list of things I very emphatically do not miss about the South, I do miss the food. The South is certainly not the only place you can get deep-fried food, but I enjoyed how they went all-in with it. No apologies. A mountain of batter-fried shrimp, accompanied by a mountain of batter-fried okra, and a basket of hush puppies (which are basically batter-fried batter). If you manage to eat all of the hush puppies, they bring you more.
Texas — and specifically, the Texas State Fair — is the all-time king of fried anything you can think of (and then some).
Famed sports columnist Randy Galloway used to call North Texas “the chicken-fried nation.”
You forgot to mention Deep Fried Oreo Cookies. It was an ambition of mine for years to try them so I finally bought a plateful at the State Fair. I took one bite. Then, just to validate it tasted like I thought it did, I took another bite. The rest of the plate went into the rubbish bin, where a swarm of wasps immediately decended and had a Happy Meal on me.
Oh now, next time I’m in Skipton, I know where I’ll be grabbing my lunch! Thanks for the heads-up!
I’m disappointed I did not know about this place the one and only time I went to Skipton. I love seeing other countries take on what an American theme restaurant is (and just ridiculous things in general). Switzerland has some very strange ideas as to what it thinks American burgers are.
Funny story… I’m from Texas. When I was on a tour of Ireland, we ended up in Dublin on the day before St. Patrick’s Day. Understandably, every restaurant was packed, so we ended up in an American theme restaurant. It actually turned out to be pretty good, despite them getting a few things… not quite right. Like serving burgers with sliced raw cucumber instead of pickles. And serving their “Texas chili” on top of basmati rice.
Guess you weren’t in Dublin, Texas anymore!
And yes, there really is such a place: https://www.ci.dublin.tx.us/. There’s also a Paris, Texas (Where Texans reach higher!).
I think every fan of 1980s classic indie cinema knows Paris, Texas.
And has started humming the Ry Cooder theme right after reading this.
I used to drive through Dublin, Texas when heading to my grandparents’ ranch. It was the home of the original Dr Pepper bottling plant and was the only plant in the world that used the original formula with pure cane sugar before it was closed down.
I used to go to Paris, Texas when I was very young to visit some relatives on my Mom’s side of the family. I don’t recall who they were.
Good news: They still bottle tasty sodas (made with pure cane sugar!) in Dublin, even though they can’t make Dr Pepper anymore. My kid’s Scout troop used to have a camping trip nearby every year and would always stop at the Dublin plant on the way home to stock up on the drinks.
To be fair raw cucumber instead of pickle is weird even in Dublin, Ireland. However I have no defence for the basmati rice.
I like how she looks like kid Mildred again when she sees the zip line.
That sounds like the sort of place that would be right at home here in Galveston, with its piratical history and cajun influence. Hmmm…
Perhaps franchise opportunities are available.
Yup. The legendary pirate captain Jean Lafitte used to have his HQ there.
I’ve been to what is supposedly his old blacksmith shop on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Cool place — it’s a bar lit exclusively by candlelight.
There’s a Pirate themed restaurant localish to me; in Penzance. I have never been inside so I don’t know if it has a zip line.
I have been in the Admiral Benbow pub, and the Waterside Meadery, which are both very nautical in decor, but not specifically piratey. No ziplines though.
You’re quite certain it isn’t pilot-themed? You’d be surprised how orphan they get mixed up.
It can be quite a paradox. A most ingenious paradox.
I see the disembodied face and the little Lottie monkey thingummy are back in the first panel… cue foreboding music
Reminds me of the Jolly Roger chain in SoCal. We used to go to the one in the Newport Beach / Balboa area. It was right on the water front IIRC. Lots of shipwreck motif, oars, sailing ship rigging, fishing nets sprinkled with starfish, sand dollars and other sea shells, etc. And, of course, the obligatory skull and cross-bone flags. Not a sea food place exclusively; I remember getting steaks and prime rib there back in the mid-’70s. Arg, the place is long gone.
I have vague recollections of a similar (not quite as piratical) themed Cajun restaurant opening as part of the Valley Centretainment complex back in the late 90s in Sheffield… the name of which annoyingly escapes me and which Google has not been able to provide me with.
Inquiring minds want to know: in the first panel, nestled between the mast and the monkey. Is that some sort of pirate-themed decoration, or a small and very excited goblin-child?
I would describe it as a “mystery entity” that has been seen before by eagle eyes over the years – going back a long way – but never explained. Think of it like Bigfoot or a UFO.
Time for me to jump back into the archives again!