Kathy's Plaice, March 19th 2006

Kathy's Plaice

1 Earlham West Centre

Norwich

Norfolk

NR5 8AD

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Oh God, another one. When will fish and chip shops cease this horrendous 'place/plaice' business. I get it. Because the building you own could be described as a place, and plaice is the product that you sell. Once again, you have bamboozled me with your intricate play on words, enough already, please, for all our sakes. We had heard of Kathy's Plaice (urgh) only in legend. Rumours had circulated that somewhere near the Friends Road based, five bedroom, semi detached dwelling we then occupied was a fish and chip shop. Finding it proved comparable to wandering aimlessly around a labyrinth for the best part of an hour, expect instead of a Minotaur, there were chavs. And instead of walls, there were chavs. In fact there was so many lining the streets, that it looked like some sort of convention was taking place. Still, eventually we found the Earlham West Centre, which comprised of various shops that didn't seem to have much purpose in the modern world. One of them was called Phil's Top Shop, and other had deciede upon The Clothes Horse. unfortunately the sun was now setting, and we appeared to have missed the vibrancy and bustling activity that might have occured there during the day. From the outside Kathy's Plaice (urgh) looked like standard fish and chip shop fare. Slightly run down, slightly grimy, catering for the locals. If you can imagine what it might look like if your grandparents installed a chip shop, complete with deep fat fryer, in their kitchen, you might get some sense of the outdated decor which lay within. Still, it held a quaint, seventies sort of charm, and I'm not one to let decoration get in the way of good food.

xxx

One good way to make money as a restaurant or takeaway owner, is to actually have your restaurant or takeaway open for business. Kathy's Plaice (urgh) closes at 8.30PM nightly. I couldn't help but think this seemed a little premature. People are only really beginning to get hungry by then, so to close in the middle of peak opening hours seemed a recipe for permanent closure to me. Business didn't appear to be booming either, everything was being cooked to order because they clearly didn't seem confident enough of their ability to shift their stock to cook it in advance. As a result, it was all taking rather a long time. When it did eventually materialise it was pretty good. The hoop earinged chavette who served us delved in to the tray containing the chips with a modestly sized bag, only to decide that that wasn't anywhere near enough, and scooped a small mountain of chips on the polystyrene tray in front of her. Overall, a decent little fish and chip shop, but so hard to find, and so regularly not open for business it's questionable whether you could ever rely on it enough to give it your undivided loyalty.