The queue outside Café 1001 was spilling into Brick Lane, and the smoke rose, sizzly, fizzly, off the open barbecue grill. The air smelled of smokyhot and meatysalt, and my stomach remembered I’d been wanting a burger for some weeks now.

The guy in front of me was chatting with his girl when the burger lady clicked her tongs together to get his attention.

“No more potato wedges,” she said, in a staccato English, under the sign announcing potato wedges and salads with every order. “No more potato wedges,” she said, “price the same,” and in one hand she held open the yellow Styrofoam box of burger to brandish the empty space where the potato wedges might have gone.

“What?”

“No-more-potato-wedges-price-the-same.” Louder this time, and yet, also, flatter.

“Can I have some corn instead?” (And here he pointed, meekly, at a deep yellow ear of corn on the grill. The painted menu on the wall read: CORN ON COBE.)

“No.”

“No corn?”

“No. And price the same.”

“And no potato?”

“No-more-potato-wedges-price-the-same.”

“Is that a beef burger?”

“Beef.”

“I ordered chicken.”