Dinner is Swerved

As if eating a five-course meal at midnight wasn't strange enough, theatre collective Food for Thought have arranged an evening of oddities amidst the crudités. There are plenty of dining experiences to choose from at the Fringe, and while this lacks the polish of pretty much any of them, it's exuberance and good humour keep things palatable.

Sat around a table with fifteen relative strangers, in a room sparsely decorated with half a dozen peculiar objects, you're treated to a medley of theatre, music and food. The theatre is barely theatre, just a handful daft skits performed by one chap in a few different jackets, but the music is welcome and often quite funny. This is surrealism by way of very weak Python, but nothing lasts for too long and there's plenty of opportunity to natter with your fellow captives.

The food itself is imaginatively conceived, from a rainbow of strange pâtés to a mysterious concoction of mint and ice (though the menu changes daily). Heston Blumenthal it ain't, but it's well-prepared and constantly surprising.

Dinner is Swerved purports to say all sorts of things about our rituals of meeting and eating, but truthfully, it achieves none of that. Despite occasional lunges at satire, it's as frothy and pointless as a foam of pea. Nevertheless, your hosts keep the wine and the conversation flowing, and there's something irresistibly Fringe-y about chowing down on "Gordon Ramsey's blackened tongue" in the presence of three students wearing pig masks.