David’s experience
There is an email which has sat at the top of my inbox since Saturday, glowering and unread. It is from OpenTable. “How was Karen’s Islington?” it reads. “We would appreciate your feedback.” I don’t think you would, I mutter. And not because I’m feeling particularly catty this week either. I just don’t think Karen’s would care.
That’s Karen’s entire concept, not caring. A Fifties American-style diner, it’s named after a “Karen” — one of those entitled suburban types who always wants to speak to the manager. She has been immortalised as an unsmiling emoji, complete with the My Chemical Romance haircut that bafflingly has been claimed by the professional complainant as their own.
The twist here is that here the staff are rude, though customers tend to give as good as they get. It comes from Australia — where else? — and because masochism or boredom (or both) are apparently universal conditions, is spreading across the UK, has vague designs on Asia and has already opened in the US which, I dunno, seems dangerous to me. It is also TikTok catnip and probably the opening most talked about since Richard Caring launched the obsequiously opulent Bacchanalia last year — somewhere offensive on the grounds of good taste, but where unsullied staff are charm incarnate.
I’ll level with you: the popularity of Karen’s baffles me. But then I find overfamiliarity nauseating — bugger off, I don’t know you — so the idea of a stranger telling me to do one mid-order doesn’t get the old motor going as much as it might. Still, having a callous streak myself, I thought it might be cheering to commission resolutely sunny Clare Finney to suffer through lunch.
‘You look like a f****** Tory’, the waitress says. I look down at my tweed jacket and boat shoes, baffled
Besides, while the Karen’s concept doesn’t immediately induce in me hysterics, I didn’t think I’d struggle with it — I’ve been in newsrooms for a decade and before that played in a band touring working men’s clubs up north. You get surprisingly used to being called a tw*t.
Turning up late — habit, not provocation — didn’t much matter given the room was a riot of people waiting, each reading the house rules — no racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, slurs, that sort of thing. “You know what this is, do you?” a parent of a little one was asked. “No-one comes to Karen’s for a good time.” It is a gentle kind of gatekeeping, but gatekeeping nevertheless.
“You look like a f****** Tory,” came the waitress’s opening gambit when it was my turn. I look down at tweed jacket and boat shoes, baffled. Well, not really; I have fielded this particular misnomer before. Likewise, it was hard to be put out when no-one offered to hang my trench coat (“that’s some creepy Inspector Gadget flasher s**t”).
So what sort of thing goes on? The wall is lit up with neon middle fingers, the music blasts, an insulter-in-chief struts about with a mic roaring insults. “Oi you, Menopause Barbie! Get up,” she shouts at one point. A middle-aged bloke is dragged to his feet to prove his smart-alec reply that he’s a part-time stripper. You’re getting the idea.
Some of it is sharper than the rest. “Chrissy? That’s a s**t name,” seems a particularly uninspired quip, and a screaming match that never deviates from “no, f**k YOU!” never takes off. Other bits tickle, like a harangued-looking mother with a sign reading “The reason I drink”, with an arrow to her little terror. And Finney is genuinely offended by her hat: ‘Robbed my outfit from Aldi.’ “Aldi!” she squeaks in outrage. I smile serenely.
One little girl is reduced to tears in about 30 seconds, though I notice the staff check in on the parents, a song is played by request, and a treat arrives. It may be vulgar, but Karen’s is not unkind.
Finney and I battle on with politeness. “May I have…” I begin an order. “May I have, may I have” our waitress Ebony says, laying on the baby voice. “Oh, sorry,” I say. “Can I have…” I suspect what I consider rudeness may not cut the mustard here.
I have fun, in a way. You should try it; there are kicks to be had and, well, you’ll certainly leave with a story. I can see that in the evenings the twentysomethings that reportedly fill the place must mostly have a hoot, so long as the short lads who resent their own height are kept on a leash. But, aside from the issue of age, those groups are unlikely to include me and I suspect will never rank Finney among their number.
As for the rest of it? Vodka arrives with the ice too big for the glass, which actually does rankle. The burger is fine, the halloumi fries good enough. This is a restaurant impervious to TripAdvisor: what, really, could be said? And besides, there is a knowingness to it. The only thing I really found offensive? The wine. But I decided against asking for the manager.
Clare’s experience
“Haven’t you got anywhere else to go?” a weary-looking man says by way of greeting, as I stumble late into Karen’s Diner, pulling two weekend bags behind me. The man — Paul Levine, who oversees every Karen’s roll-out — sports a black sweatshirt emblazoned with a Karen emoji, and an expression that says he has seen it all and enjoyed precisely none of it.
The answer to his question is yes, a thousand times yes. I would rather be anywhere else but here. And yet, as some journalists investigate political fraud and others report from the front line of conflict, so I am in a neon-lit diner heaving with children, subjecting myself to service that is deliberately bad.
I am here, eyeing a shot of sambuca served in a ceramic toilet and being told to “f*** off” by our waitress because David imagined I’d fined the concept of Karen’s more offensive than most people. So far, he appears to be right: I hate loud noises, gratuitous swearing, audience participation and, I’m afraid to say, burgers. I am pathologically conflict-averse. Karen’s is full of these things and more.
The concept — a word I also hate — is that staff are rude to you, and that you are allowed to be rude back, so long as you abide the house rules. They give you a paper hat with suitably cutting insult scribbled across it, and they take your order with sass and a glaring scowl. “Am I eating it?” our waitress asks David, when he seeks her opinion as to which burger to order. “Then don’t ask me. I don’t care. F*** off.”
Naturally, kids find this hilarious – because when you’re a child, swearing is inherently funny. Can you imagine being 10 years old and actively encouraged to shout “you’re a talentless f***” at a fellow diner taking part in a singing game? Or your mum being forced into a hat that says “lazy slag”, and the person serving her singing “happy birthday f*** off”?
There are moments when Karen’s does hit home, when the insults feel more like good-natured joshing
I can see why kids get a kick out of it, even though I cannot imagine ever bringing my own here. I just can’t see the appeal to an adult sense of humour. Granted, there can be some humour in rudeness; in flipping the bird at social convention — but comedic impact of shouting, swear words and bawdy innuendo is largely derived from shock.
And the shock at Karen’s quickly wears off. In fact, it becomes wearying. God knows, I enjoy a creative swear — writers like Arnado Iannuci and Irvine Walsh have made it an artform — but swearing at Karen’s Diner centres around s*** and f*** (and Tory, if that counts?). Using the c-word is a sackable offence, we’re told, which when you’ve got 25 schoolkids effing and blinding feels like shutting the door of Pandora’s Box after the horse has bolted.
There are rare moments when Karen’s does hit home; when the insults feel less forced, and more like good-humoured joshing. I enjoy David being called out on arriving late, all the more so because I am the reason; I’m amused by Paul’s response to my nervous laugh and inability to be anything but polite. “It’s going to be a long lunch” he observes to David, looking droll.
Karen’s Diner is about performance, of course, and many of the new staff are actors-in-training, cutting their teeth on sharp one-liners and the development of the uniquely offensive character they can inhabit whilst serving. Paul cleaner has his “personality” nailed – shrewd, bored and world-weary, and his dry commentary is genuinely entertaining. Perhaps when his newer staff have more fully fledged characters, Karen’s will feel more like the immersive experience it aspires towards being. But at present? It’s a staging post, past which the world is hurtling in a handcart to hell.
