Tastebuds, October 18th 2007

Tastebuds

21 Prince of Wales Road

Norwich

Norfolk

United Kingdom

NR1 1BG

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Fairy lights, ample seating, good food, a friend lying in a deep slumber, head down in a polystyrene container of chips covered in mayonnaise. What more could you possibly want from your traditional post nightclub eatery? Everything about Tastebuds just works. It's a nice place to sit, there are quiz machines, you can even buy a beer. It won't be a cheap beer, you'll probably regret it, but hell, it's nice to have the option. There's also an impressive table playing host to a number of industrial size bottles of condiments, so if you want to drench your chips or friends in burger sauce, then that's completely your decision. Everything is cooked to order, and it doesn't take particularly long to be served. The chili sauce is excellent, spicy, good texture, no inexplicable...lumps, to speak of. All in all it's good news all round. Essentially, these sort of places are ten a penny down Prince of Wales Road. In a drunken stupor, who really knows what makes us choose the places we do? The lights? The food? The convenience? From the outside it looks inviting, warm, friendly. Standing outside in the cold night air, cliques of scantily clad, orange skinned girls milling around in front of the various clubs and bars, that probably counts for a lot.

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Price wise, it's so so, I wouldn't call it a bargain by any means. It's probably about average, all things considered. £3,20 for a bacon burger, £3.50 for a small kebab, £1.50 for cheesy chips. In truth when people visit these sort of eateries, They tend to just want 'food', in its most generic sense. They just want substance, something to fill the void. Yet people seem to get frighteningly ambitious about what they would not just like, but can physically consume. 'Yeah mate, can I get a half pound bacon burger with extra cheese, large chips, onion rings, and a diet coke' was one order I recalled. It's unbelievable. Why don't you just deep fry your own arm and chomp away on that? The rows and rows of empty tables in these place at 5pm tell you everything you need to know about how intoxicated you need to be to find these outlets an appealing proposition. You can find far better burgers, chips, kebabs and pizzas elsewhere, and it isn't as if that is any great revelation. You know that you aren't being served the best cuts of beef, in your heart you just hope it is beef of some description. The process of evaluation becomes based on simpler virtues. Is clean? Will it make me throw up? Is there food and sauce all over the tables? Will it take an age to get some service? Based upon this sort of criteria, Tastebuds makes a compelling argument to be the benchmark of Prince of Wales Road takeaways.