Soba

emine

Apparently opening on Wednesday. Soba is basically another Miso - small chain, similar menu - so wonder how they will fare.

Ali

same Turkish guy sitting there on Friday night, didn't look like much had changed

JaneDoe

The Soba just off Oxford Circus used to be great. I worked just around the corner so went there often a few years ago. I hope this one is as good!

Kaz

I hope the guy has learnt his lesson from his last venture... Some pr perhaps? Getting involved with the local forum? That spot seems to be cursed, wasn't there an actual bakery there some years back before Miso? And I think a bar as well at some point before that?

rainbow_carnage

There was a bakery there for about two minutes. It wasn't any good. The bread was OK, but not a lot better than what you could get at Tesco.

It's not that the location is bad. They just can't seem to get anyone who's good at what they do.

I'm still waiting for someone to open a proper bakery/patisserie. The sort of place where they bake everything from scratch, not reheat from frozen.

krappyrubsnif

It begins to look suspiciously as if that space is 'for rent' to front businesses that are destined to fail....

rainbow_carnage

A front for what?

A friend who lived in SG about 10 years ago used to buy weed from one of the restaurants. It's still in business. There no reason why you can't serve good food and have a bit on the side...

krappyrubsnif

M'lud, I am not for one moment suggesting that any business anywhere near SG is anything other than completely genuine.......however, in a general sense I refer you to discussions of certain highly colourful business methods in volumes such as these:
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Illicit-Smugglers-Traffickers-Copycats-Hijacking/dp/0385513925">Illicit, How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy</a>, by Moses Naim, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Washing-Machine-Nick-Kochan/dp/0715636111">The Washing Machine: How Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Soils Us</a> by Nick Kochan and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Treasure-Islands-Havens-Stole-World/dp/1847921108">Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World</a> by Nicholas Shaxson - all well worth reading.

sharybo

well I know you've mentioned before about the florists being a front for something, and I have no knowledge at all about these things, but every time I walk past there I wonder if they ever sell a thing - there never seems to be anything remotely nice and I've never seen anyone in there, so surely they can't make enough to cover the rent?

SGMonkey

@sharybo : you haven't seen the price of their Christmas trees have you? The profit from that must keep the them alive for the rest of the year...

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ben

This might be a stupid question, but if it's a front, why go to the expense of refurbishing it twice within a year?

krappyrubsnif

That's the point. You put vast amounts of wonga through the business as 'expenses' (paid, of course at inflated rates on invoices to companies run by your cousins or a series of business partners offshore). So a disproportionate amount of cash that might have had a very dodgy origin has got safely into a legitimate bank account somewhere - tax free and available to spend. Then you sit back and watch the business fail, and do it all over again. Purely theoretically, of course.

In a way, it's similar to what some of the big supermarkets and banana companies do - passing money on to foreign subsidiaries and hiding profits as expenses - except the source of the supermarkets' money is completely legitimate. They do it to avoid paying tax.

Sevlow

Who fucking cares eh?

taff bach

I fucking care because it is a neat way of of avoiding tax on 50% of the worlds money. Fancy a 50% cut in your taxes so that you could stimulate the economy and put people back to work? I thought not.

krappyrubsnif

I fucking care too for the same reasons as taff bach. Actually I'm not that bothered about small-time shysters using fronts to evade tax on a few thousand quid. What bothers me more is the likes of supermarkets, food businesses, pharmaceutical companies, banks and pop stars avoiding trillions of dollars in tax by sticking their money offshore.

Somebody has to pay for all the things that keep a country running. If they won't pay their share, the burden falls on the rest of us. With half the world's money now going offshore and staying in the hands of corporations, their shareholders and the super-rich, there soon won't be enough to pay for these things. So we will all end up going to hell in a hand cart.

I do fucking care if I have to start living in a Third World country because someone's not paying their share.

Arkady

Quite. We won't get rid of tax havens without serious international regulation though, regulation that will be seen to challenge national sovereignty in a big way. Another reason to escape the nationalist paradigm...

Ian

Interesting deal done today about payment of tax by UK nationals in Swiss banks: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14649194>;

Sevlow

zzzzzzzzz boring cunts

taff bach

This insults cunts. Swiss will tax offshore at lower rate and the money will just shift. Very Tory to make a big noise and then do very little.

Mirandola

@Sevlow, if it's so dull, why keep reading?

Arkady

I'd be interested to see how much additional cash this makes the Exchequer. They are talking £billions in the press. But agreed, the money will just be moved to another tax haven without a global tax regime.

Kaz

Soooo, did anyone check out Soba yesterday???

Sevlow

Yeah it was dead, I reckon it's just a front

Ali

has any one tried it yet. I saw someone in there last night sitting in the window and they had a couple of girls out front trying to pull in the customers

emine

I got a takeaway last weekend and it was very disappointing. Miso was better - and that wasn't great. The restaurant is an improvement though - better lighting, more atmosphere. Based on this one experience, I don't rate their food but I should probably give them another go.

RedSturgeon

Could be a peoples' front.

Long way from Judea though.

Ali

Back onto subject I tried it out on Saturday for a take away. It had a few people in and the girl that served me was very nice and tried to be helpful. There is a vary limited menu and they didn’t seem to be willing to cook up something that I wanted ie Singapore noodles and any Asian Chef should be able to make that. They have some quite fancy noodle dishes and generic rice ones. Generally it was quite expensive, the food was fresh enough but very bland and I can see no reason for trying it again with the current menu. The spare ribs where awful so next time it is back to Cats. The “owner” was lurking about in the background trying to tell the girls running what to do he must be loosing or washing rather a lot of cash at the moment. He should try and do a Vietnamese, do it well and get out of the restaurant and he might make some money or give up and get a Greggs in !

Ali

Think it is closing saw the Turkish guy loading up his car with lost of the  essentials  from the kitchen and it had a closed look about it as well this sfternoon

krappyrubsnif

Ho hum.

Jonathan

Clearing tables and chairs into a van this morning. Wonder what will come next. Maybe the succession of short lived restaurants is a work of conceptual art, like the Museum of Guillaume Retz?