The Garden House, May 11th 2008

The Garden House
1 Pembroke Road
Norwich
Norfolk
NR2 3HD
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English people like the summer, or at the very least they like the idea of it. They like the idea of heat, clear blue skies and refreshing Enid Blighton style-esque beverages in quaint, slightly overgrown gardens whilst simultaneously tending to an unusually responsive, yet equally rustic and well loved barbeque. The truth is we aren't really cut out for these extreme weather conditions. An inch of snow and the traffic comes to a standstill as we abandon our cars on the motorway and forge a path home on foot to avoid being snowed in or out of whereever we intended to be. An unforseen summer heatwave and we lethargically trapse along the streets like Moses leading the Hebrews, lathered in sun lotion and demanding that the government embrace the Spanish siesta as its own to combat the utterly intolerable temperature. It was a Sunday afternoon which fit the latter perfectly. Not a cloud in the sky, the temperature high enough to warrant the forecasters reading it in Fahrenheit to accentuate the difference, and a thirst which made the walk for a drink wortwhile. I'd heard a lot of things about the Garden House, and truth be told, it was a fairly mixed bag which had amounted to 'quite expensive but lovely garden'.

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It was a lovely garden, it was in fact so lovely that it made me wonder how it stayed in business during the other 51 weeks in the year that people didn't sit in it. The inside wasn't particularly special, as dark and empty as you might expect on a hot day when everyone else was sitting outside. Being a Sunday afternoon they were clearly pushing the roast which came with chicken, beef or pork. At £7 it wasn't a bargain, but I wouldn't describe it as overly expensive either. All the girls behind the bar looked like they should be selling bead bracelets at some kind of market stall for some reason. We placed our order and they handed us two wooden spoons. When we wandered outside to find a table it became evident that there were a lot of people with wooden spoons. Annoyingly our food didn't come at the same time, which is probably because of their rather rustic spoon ordering system that can't process two people from the same party ordering food seperately.

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When the roast eventually turned up it was pretty nice. The roast potatoes were really well done, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. It also came with two monstrous Yorkshire puddings, (honestly, they were massive) as well as proper gravy which hadn't started its life in granule form. The only let down was the chicken itself, which wasn't carved from a whole bird but was just a roasted breast. Still, this aside it was all excellent. The atmosphere was upbeat, probably a result of the weather, the only blemish a guy with a laugh that sounded the horn on my old Rover 214. It was the kind of laugh people use when they're part of the studio audience for a television sitcom to try and make it on to the soundtrack, honestly, it was the most excruciating sound I'd heard come from a human mouth since Davina McCall's 'all your grey mum' moment in that L'Oreal advert. Not that was really in any way the fault of the Garden House itself.
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Verdict: A really good spot, especially on a summer day, but its quality is probably in direct correlation to the weather - The inside isn't much to write home about. The food was great and there was quite a lot of it, and although it wasn't exactly value, you pay a premium for the surroundings you sit in while you're eating it. Based on that, it's well worth a visit.

The Bakehouse, 16th February 2008

The Bakehouse

135 Colman Road

Norwich

United Kingdom

NR4 7TJ

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The Bakehouse is located down Colman road, close to the junction where the Avenues cross over near the university. It's a burberry hotspot, clearly nothing quite hits the spot after a leisurely morning mugging the locals and vandelising public property than a delicious cornish pasty. Inside, it was a bit like an unbranded Bakers' Oven. The woman at the counter had the same striped pinny and hairnet, and the walls and counters were all made out of the same cheap materials that you find in department store window displays. There was nowhere to sit, it was very much a takeaway counter styled offering. Frankly, tables and chairs or not, it wasn't a particularly nice place to be anyway, so it was probably for the best. I ordered a cornish pasty, and was told that, 'I'm sorry, they're all sold out'. Firstly, she didn't look very sorry. She looked pleased at this temporary downturn in my fortunes. Secondly, it was ten in the morning, and I could only wonder what sort of mamoth pasty order had they received so early in the morning as to remove them as an option for the rest of the day? It was unbelievable. I went for a steak slice instead, and it tasted pretty good. There was quite a lot of filling in it, and didn't cope well with partial consumption. in short, it fell apart. Perhaps that was as much the fault of myself as its constructor, maybe I'd just aproached it the wrong way. Maybe I'd been too quick and careless, and not made it the military operation it should have been. Still, for £1.45 it was difficult to find too much fault with any of it.

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Verdict: Overall, a cheap and cheerful sort of place, where the service is equally cheap but not quite as cheerful, and the food is fairly standard sort of fare. Buns, pies, rolls and cakes are plentiful, and on a cold day in the middle of winter, hot food is a nice option to have.

Special Edition : Orwell's Fisheries Fish Bar, Suffolk, February 13th 2008

Orwell Fisheries

9-11 Orwell Rd

Felixstowe

United Kingdom

IP11 7HE
01394 282540

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In one hundred years time, when Gloucester, Norwich and other recognisable English towns and cities are all submerged deep under the sea as a result of horrific global warming, Kevin Costner roaming the sea in a small vessel trying to find dry land, I wonder what people will make of the English seaside. In many ways it's completely ridiculous. Towns so unbelievably dull that they require 'amusements' to captivate some kind of interest, neon lights round every corner, and the strong aroma of anything and everything vaguely edible being fried not too far away. For Felixstowe, most of these descriptions are doubly true. As the largest container port in the UK, something which local residents are inherently proud of, it isn't exactly picturesque. Yet there's something quite charming about it, and eating fish and chips on the sea front in the middle of water is probably one of the most British things anyone has ever done. Orwell's doesn't seem to really know exactly what its name is. There are various words written on different parts of the exterior, 'orwell's fisheries', 'fish', 'fish bar', 'restaurant', take your pick. Either way, we got the gist of it. It was another takeaway which had chosen to proudly display a rather unflattering certificate it's window, this one was for 'adhering to basic food hygiene standards'. So, washing hands? Cleaning work surfaces? The things that most people do and just take for granted because they're, well, common sense? You know it. As far as the food went, it was very good. Fish and chips is more expensive than you expect, £5 exactly, but you get what you pay for. Propper chip shop chips are always good news, and here they were excellent. The batter was crispy, and the fish tasted really fresh. Not too oily, crunchy on the outside, by not too dry on the inside.

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Verdict: A really unique experience, classic standard seaside fish and chip shop. Not exactly the bargain of the century, but the quality of the food on offer made it worthwhile. Packed with locals, this was clearly the standard haunt for people's fish and chip requirements, and after eating there it wasn't hard to see why.

Special Edition : Black Tiles, Suffolk, February 12th 2008

Black Tiles

Martleshame

Woodbridge

Suffolk

United Kingdom

IP12 4SP

01473 624038

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The argument that if you really can only find the time or motivation to appreciate your girlfriend, fiance or wife on one designated day of the year, then maybe your relationship is beset with more problems than can be fixed with chocolate hearts and lingerie is a good one. Still, it seemed like something I would be best kept keeping to myself, so here we were at Black Tiles, Woodbridge. The interior was beautiful. Dark wood used throughout, with predominently red and black walls and elegant candles on every table. The light was just right, soft without being too dark to see the people you were eating with. The menu was a bit sparce, but there were nearly a dozen specials to make up for it. They were recalled at such speed by our waiter that I scarcely took them all in. In many ways, it seemed to make them all rather less special, but it added to the overall choice nonetheless.

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The service was in danger of becomming a little amateurish. It appeared to be run mostly by school kids wearing badly fitting shirts and scuffed black shoes. As somebody who has been sixteen, you can spot the pair of black utility shoes from a mile away. They aren't comfortable to wear, nor do they look good. Generally, they're worn to weddings, funeral, work, school and any other mandatory formal event in your calendar. As a result, it was a bit like being served by the cast of Bugsy Malone. My confience wasn't enhanced when my girlfriend ordered a J2O, only for our waiter to form the expression of somebody who'd just been asked the square root of 7613, before scurrying off to find a pad to write it down on. It didn't seem like a particularly elaborate request, but credit where credit is due, he did return with a J2O as promised. Small steps, eh? Later, upon arriving at our table with the food we had ordered, he ran in to further trouble. Seemingly drawing a blank at identifying what it was he was supposed to be serving, he eventually came out uncertaintly with, 'here's some food'. Well that much appeared to be blitheringly obvious to all but the most unfathomably incompetent.

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I'd never eaten swordfish before. I'd always been curious, I'd heard only good things about it. It had taken a lot of inner persuasion to convince myself to branch out from the reliable steak and chips option. Further more, I was in close proximity to somebody eating the steak and chips option. If this moment of spontaneous adventure were to backfire, there would be nowhere to hide from my mistake. On the plate, it all appeared a bit of a self assembly job. Somewhat like the beginning of Ready Steady Cook, before any cooking had taken place. Presumably the job of gelling the ingredients together to form some sort of meal lay with the lemon compote. The swordfish was very well cooked. It tasted like chickeny salmon, which was a nice combination of two things I very much enjoy on their own. The truffle potatoes were good too, rich and earthy, even if their purple colour was initially a little diconcerting. The green beans were excellent, slightly al dente with a good crunch to them. The problem was that despite the high quality of these indegredients in their own right, there was nothing briging them together other than the strong use of lemon. The lemon compote was sort of blobbed about the plate, and the dish came with an additional segment in case you hadn't had your fill of it. It was too solid, it didn't bring any of the individual items together. It was a Sunday roast without gravy, or cornflakes without milk. It isn't as if lemon and fish is a particularly groundbreaking combination at the best of times, but it was all in all a poor and quite lazy accompanyment to what were essentially good ingredients.

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For desert we both ordered strawberry pavlova, largely as a result of the intruige of how good a pavolva containing out of season strawberries could really be. The merengue itself could have done with being a bit chewier, it had the consistency of those premade supermarket bases you find at family summer barbeques. The strawberries themselves however, were far tastier and flavoursome than I had expected, and the coolis that was drizzled across the dish was tangy and delicious. Overall, it was a light, tasty desert that went a long way to atone for the slightly disappointing main course.

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Verdict: Black Tiles is a really nice place to sit, there are five areas, one outside, which are all decorated beautifully. Whilst I did feel that some of the dishes available smacked of the kitchen trying to cook beyond their means, throwing words like 'compote' and 'coolis' unecessarily in to the equation, their simpler dishes looked extremely appetising and it is certainly recommended.

Good Food Indian Halal Take Away, 2nd February 2008

Good Food Indian Halal Take Away
15 St. Stephens Rd
Norwich
Norfolk
NR1 3SP

01603 765119
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It's almost endearing that the Good Food Indian Halal Take Away forgo the self indulgent restuarant names you might find littered down Prince of Wales Road on a Friday night on the tiles. It doesn't claim to be the best, or super, mega, fantastic or anything other overtly hyperbolic you might care to think of. It appears a genuine evaluation, an honest description. You have to admire it. The first thing to note is that the delivery was quick. Really, extremely quick. Not that you can read too much in to that on a one time basis. The roads could have been clear, every traffic light could have been green, the establishment could have been merely yards from our house. Still, it boded well for the rest of the experience.
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I'm unsure if this is common knowledge, and that by making this revelation I am simply exposing myself as a mere novice of take away reviewing, but my chicken biryani came with rice and and a seperate foil dish of sauce to go over it. This, in addition to the basmati rice I had also ordered provided a veritable mountain of food. We had also ordered a Kima naan and Bombay potato to share, which in total had come to £16.55 between the two of us which is about average. Of course, given the quantity anomaly which had occured this evening, it did appear exceptional value and rather a daunting challenge. There were no gratuities to speak of, other than the standard bag of onion mush which never looks particuarly apetising and is inevitably discarded without a second thought.
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It looked good too, primarily because it wasn't comparable to a castle surrounded by a moat of oil as is so often the case. Not only that, but there were vegetables in it. And not just the expected token, sad, solitary oninions, but sweetcorn, courgettes, mushrooms. It looked vaguely, well, nutritional. It tasted excellent too, a fresh spicy taste, but not so much as to lessen the flavour. It was hearty, warm and filling, but not in the chemically enhanced way that sits uneasily in your stomach, making you wish you'd known better.

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Verdict: There aren't a great deal of Indian takeaways in Norwich, and the ones that do exist rarely do enough to justify your continual loyalty to them. In the Good Food Indian Halal Takeaway, I might well have found one whose menu is worth holding on to.

The Riverbank Chinese Buffet, Monday 28th January, 2008

Riverbank Chinese Buffet

Norwich

Norfolk

NR1 1ED

United Kingdom

01603 612323

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I'd done it. Somehow it had happened. I'd convinced my girlfriend that an 'all you can eat Chinese buffet' was a plausible solution to our midday pangs of hunger. How this had happened was really anybody's guess. The phrase 'all you can eat' is one which invariably triggers a sense of challenge to the self respect of any 21st century man. Of course there are no real winners, but every visit is always greeted with fresh, albeit brief, hope and revitalised enthusiasm. The Riverbank Chinese Buffet sits in the midst of the riverside development which has taken a rather servere turn for the worst since part of it began to show signs of iminently sinking in to the river. Frankly, the tedium of bowling and slot machines make the risk of severe flooding look like it would improve the excitement factor no end, thoughts not shared by the county council.

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Six pounds fifty for lunch may seem like good value for money considering it gives you free licence to gourge yourself on noodles for three hours. On the other hand, how often do you really eat four plates of food, plus desert, for lunch? It's really all relative. On the one hand, yes, you're getting a lot more food for not a great deal more money, but since it's food you wouldn't have eaten anyway, is it really the bargain it seems? The room is filled with a combination of the disorientated elderly, hungry students, and a variety of people who look like extras from homeowner loan adverts taking a break from consolodating all their debts in to one easy monthly payments. None of them look particularly, well, happy. They all appear either forced to be there, or as if they have nowhere else to go.

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The interior was spacious, if a little souless. Rows of identical tables, surrounded by eggshell blue walls adorned with laminate Chinese lettering glued to them with good intention, but done with so little care as to demonstrate that the Riverbank buffet is very much a volume business. There's no foreplay, no time to savour the atmosphere or enjoy the view. It's down to business. The food is good, some of it could do with being hotter, and the vat of curry sauce looks a little ominous. It has a skin. Frankly, it shouldn't. The tapkenyaki is very tasty, and although there aren't really enough variations of raw ingredients to make it worth choosing them in advance and then having them cooked in front of you, it is a nice touch and does look impressive.

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Verdict: In reality, the Riverbank leaves you with a simple choice. Pay £6.50 to gorge yourself with noodles for as long as your tormented stomach will allow, or pay a premium for more desirable surroundings and more elequent dining. But where does the costcutting stop? Why don't we all just discard cutlery altogether, and eat with our hands out of one big, communal trough and shave another pound from the cost? Or better still, negate the trough and eat off the floor until someone rises from the mound of assorted dishes, proclaims that enough is enough, and asks what we have all become? After all, what, in essence, is the point of eating out? It's the ambience, the atmosphere, the company. Surely binging like the island dwellers of Lost finally getting off the island, and tasting food on the mainland again for the first time is somewhat missing the point, isn't it? It's hard to fault the Riverside's value for money, it's eagerness to please or it's hospitality. It just fundamentally misses the point, and it's clientel of the absurdly obsese, disorientated elderly, and hungry students appear to reflect it.

Thirstplace, 25th January 2008

UEA Sportspark

University of East Anglia

Norwich

Norfolk

NR4 7TJ

01603 592398

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There's something nice about swimming pool cafes. Maybe it's the smell of chlorine, or perhaps it's the feeling that you've actually earnt the chocolate muffin(s) you're about to eat. Once seated in the cafe, as diners you're all in the same sporty boat. Never mind the fact that you've just spent forty minutes thrashing around ungracefully in the pool, that's no longer relavent. You're an athlete. Sort of. Still, you never expect the food to be anything more than average. Frozen pastry goods, shipped in from outside vendors and microwaved til near death. A wide plethora of unhealthy, fried products to replenish all those spent calories, the same familiar story. This is why Thirstplace is all the more surprising, it's far better than it has any right to be. It's not just good by swimming pool cafe standards, it's good by restaurant standards. The menu is adventurous, chicken and mushroom linguine, cajun chicken stirfry, goat's cheese salad and parma ham are just a few of the dishes available. There is of course, no getting away from the fact that you're eating in the same standard swimming pool cafe-esque surroundings. From the restaurant, you can see straight in to area of the Sportspark where they have rock climbing taking place on a large synthetic wall. It grabs your attention, you can't not look at it, it's like a traffic pile up on a motorway. Some of these climbing enthusiasts are complete lunatics, climbing with no safety gear what so ever with their crazy facial hair, bead necklaces, wifebeaters and a complete disregard for their own health. Whether you consider this adjacent freak show a positive or negative addition to your dining experience is really down to personal preference.

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I ordered a burger, I was in the mood for one. Given the other more elaborate options, I felt almost dirty for doing so, but I stuck to my guns and went for it. £5.10 for the standard burger with chips and onion rings plus two toppings from the menu which included mushrooms, bacon and cheese amongst other things was the deal on offer. First impressions, it was massive. Huge. Gargantuan. It came inside a large ciabatta, and as a whole was equivalent in size and weight to the hardback edition of the final Lord of the Rings novel. It came with a mountain of chips, but crucially no ketchup. That was extra. In my mind, condiments should be free, or included. It's just unecessary penny pinching in my mind. This small quibble aside, it was perfect, if anything the only issue was that there was too much of it. By the time I'd finished it, I was in no mood to swim and barely capable of walking home. This is probably more a result of my perception of the burger as a challenge to my masculinity than a fault of the restaurant itself.

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Verdict: Overall, brilliant value for really quite exceptional food given what you might expect. The surroundings aren't exactly in keeping with the food on offer, presumably they want to showcase the quality of the Sportspark to as many people as possible, but it's still an interesting addition. Even if you aren't the sporty type, it's almost worth paying the 50 pence spectator charge just to get in to the restaurant, a brilliant find.

Blend UEA, January 25th 2008

Blend

University of East Anglia

Norwich

United Kingdom

NR4 7 TJ UK

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I wonder how hard it is to use a panini making machine. Here's one to have a look at, http://www.nextag.com/panini-machine/search-html. There doesn't seem to be a great deal to it. You have your panini, you have your ingredients to go inside it. Once it's been filled, grilling it seems to be a fairly straight forward procedure. This only seemed to make the fact that, unbeknown to me at the time of purchase, my panini had exploded. There was cheese, peperoni and tomato everywhere. It wasn't a pretty sight. The food in Blend all could have been purchased en masse at Iceland. Limp, lukewam potato wedges, microwaved sausage rolls, spontaneously combustable paninis. It isn't groundbreaking stuff. Clearly all shipped in from external vendors and heated up by the limited expertise employed there, the end product was always going to struggle to be anything more than extremely mediocre. The hot beverages are a product of hot water self service machines. As a place to sit, it has the feel of a sub par Starbucks to it. The whole place is extremely red, and full of wacky booths and stools which offer neither style nor function.

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Frankly, it's bad enough having to eat service station food, and make no mistake, that is what this is the equivalent to, at 3 in the morning on the M11 when you have precious little choice. To try and inflict this rubbish on people when you don't have a monopoly on the through traffic, and the university has so many other eateries to choose from is almost embarrassing for all those concerned. The food here is bad, the coffee is bad, the decor? Really, incredibly bad. As a cafe, when the SU bar is capable of producing better hot beverages and food than you are, something's definitely not working. All in all, a woefully poor second best to The Hive, The SU, and any other university catering facility you care to mention.

Ephesus, Thursday 24th January, 2008

Ephesus
15-17 Rose La
Norwich
NR1 1PL
01603 625505
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Generally speaking, takeaway comes in two incarnations. There are the places that cook the food that you are incapable of cooking, that have the expertise, that have the passion and the best ingredients. Then there are the places that cook because you can't be bothered to. They don't have the expertise, they don't really have the passion or the ingredients either. They're a bit souless, but it' a niche market and they know their customer base. Ephesus is a member of the latter. It is the soup kitchen of takeaways, the establishment catering for the lazy cooks on a shoe string budget, who pay with change they've made from the shrapnel in their pockets. The whole experience was just unbelievably average. The menu was average, the delivery time was average, and the food? Yes, that was average too. It was takeaway by numbers, the kind of place that endeavours to entice you with a variety of ghastly 'meal deals' involving gateaux, chocolate sundaes and various other unecessary side orders to mask the difficiencies of their core product. The pizza itself was clearly a product of the pizza-o-matic machine. A frozen, oily, greasy base sent down the conveyor belt for twelve minutes with no love, attention, or evidence of herbs or seasoning. The upside to this, is that Ephesus is ludicrously cheap. These sort of establishments are ten a penny in Norwich, and if they can't provide good food, then attractive prices are pivotal to their survival. Buy one get one free on all pizzas make it excellent value, but it isn't as if these bottom end pizzarias are all that rare, and higher quality ones are not generally a great deal more expensive. Frankly your tastebuds deserve better.

Hong Kong Chinese Takeaway, 23rd January, 2008

Hong Kong Chinese Takeaway

166a Unthank Road

Norwich

NR2 2AB
01603 622851
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Certificates are usually something to celebrate. They're a recognition of your accommplishments, your qualities and your labours. The Hong Kong Chinese takeaway has three, and intruigingly they're all for accommplishment in the 'Safer Food Awards'. Interesting. So, not deemed to be safe as such, more that they were just slightly safer than the competition. The lesser of two evils then. Is there are a compliment wrapped up in there somewhere? Well, probably, but I'm not sure whether it really provided the customer reassurance it had intended to. First impressions were that it was crowded, there were regulars in there which is always a good sign. Located on Unthank Road, the London Oxford Street of Norwich's student population, as one of two Chinese eateries it demonstrated an early edge over the competition. The specials looked interesting too, a banana pancake roll caught my eye. I decided against it. Still, nice to see people trying to push the boundaries of what should and shouldn't be battered. I order chowmein, chips and a pancake roll, and it emerges from the kitchen within about ten minutes.
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The pancake roll is delicious, crunchy on the outside, really tasty on the inside. The chips are real, fresh cut, fried to order style and there are lots of them too. The chowmein is excellently flavoured, without being greasy or oversauced. The other members of our party commented that the spare ribs were delicious too. Equally importantly, I didn't feel as if my meal had come out of some large, communal vat. It felt specially made to order, just for me. Whether or not that is actually true or not is really anybody's guess, but it felt good none the less. In a city where Chinese takeaways are common, and the owners have to be weary of over saturation of both their food and the market itself, the Hong Kong is by far the best I have experienced here. The service is quick, efficient and friendly, and the quality of the food itself makes it the benchmark of its catagory. Criticisms? Well, it was a little more expensive compared to its competition, but when you taste the food you'll quickly realise where that extra money went. It's no great surprise that by paying more, you get more, in a word it was excellent.

Chopstix Noodle Bar, January 2nd 2008

Chopstix Noodle Bar

28Orford Place

Norwich

Norfolk

England

NR1 3QA

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Chopstix noodle bar is located in a spot where logic suggests a restaurant shouldn't. If you can call it a restaurant. Crammed in between Pizza Hut and an electrical shop, it's easy not to notice it. The layout is unconventional, a take away style counter at the entrance to entice the hungry shoppers outside, leads through to picnic table style benches behind and a staircase at the far end which leads upstairs to an internet cafe which I chose not to venture to. Unfortunately, not having a front door in the midst of winter didn't make for particularly comfortable dining. The Pokemon influenced decor and odd Japanese heavy metal musical accompaniment didn't create much of an ambience either. After looking at the various dishes, I went for something called 'chicken noodles'. It pulled no punches, that was what it was. Chicken with noodles, nothing more, nothing less. Actually I lie, it did contain some vegetables. I felt that the bland, uninspiring dish I ate wasn't representitive of what we on offer as a whole, the other dishes on offer looked extremely appetising. Moreover, the number of customers I noted coming in and ordering while we were seated seemed to demonstrate that there is definitely demand for what Chopstix has to offer. Most of the dishes came with rice or noodles included for £4.50, which is fairly similiar to what you might pay at one of the gargantuan fast food franchises. Still, you have to admire Chopstix's gutsy attitude towards taking on these massive, global corporations. Strapped for cash, clearly they cannot hope to compete for the leases on the best buildings in the prime locations. Nor can they afford to mass produce greasy pizza bases with calorie rich toppings for customers to consume until near combustion. Yet there they are, right under Pizza Hut's nose, and in a city which boasts two mall's worth of franchised food outlets, this independent takeaway, come restaurant, come internet cafe is surely something to be celebrated and supported.

The Cantonese Kitchen, December 6th, 2007

The Cantonese Kitchen

97 Unthank Rd

Norwich

Norfolk

United Kingdom

NR2 2PE

01603 614605

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The Monetgues and the Capulets, Spears and Federline, Brown and Cameron, Lily Allen and everyone, these are just some of the intruiging rivalries we have become all too familiar with. And on the busiest street of Norwich's student district, two Chinese takeaways battle for supremacy, and the coins and notes of hungry adolescents. On the west, Hong Kong Chinese Food, and on the east, the Cantonese Kitchen. As it was the closest, I had always previously opted for the former, and such was the quality of the food I had never found reason to stray. It was, all in all, a happy union. Still, if you stand still you can become stale, set in your ways, complacent. I would hate to think I had missed out on a superior eatery just because I couldn't bring myself to break out of my comfort zone. Time to leave the Shire and go on an adventure. To the shops. A further two hundred yards or so down the road. So, not really a very adventurous sort of adventure, but still enough to provide some sense of having earnt the food that was to follow.

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As kitchens go, this didn't really look like one. Maybe It's my limited experience of kitchens, maybe I've been doing it wrong, maybe they all look like this apart from mine, but to my untrained eye, this looked like a bare white room. It had more common with a dentist's waiting room than a kitchen, albeit without the dog eared copies of Country Life and Prima magazine lying on a central coffee table. The food all seemed to appear, somewhat miraculously and magically, through a hatch positioned low down on the far wall by the floor. It seemed a little unconventional. Did we trust the hatch? Where exactly was our food coming from? Sweeney Todd? Narnia? Who could be completely sure? In this tale of two takeaways, it's the little things that become important. For one thing, everything here seemed to be about ten pence more expensive than at the Hong Kong, and although this didn't translate to much of a price difference overall, it was still giving the competition an unecessary edge. Secondly, my pancake roll wasn't particuarly convincing. It tasted like a collection of sad, wilted vegetables in a bodybag of tracing paper. Still, I could take solace in increased quantity of chowmein I received, although the chips were a bit pale and lifeless. Presumably there must be a high enough volume of students and others whose preference is simply based upon convenience to keep both of these businesses afloat, but on a street which also offers a Subway, an Indian takeaway, a fish and chip shop and a kebab shop, mediocre isn't really an adjective you can afford being associated with you. Unfortunately for the Cantonese Kitchen, that's exactly what it is.

Figaro, November 11th 2007

Figaro

1 All Saints Street

Norwich

United Kingdom

NR1 3LG

01603 667809

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The trouble with Bella Italia, is that franchise or not, they just do what they do so damn well it's hard to find fault with it. They aren't the only Italian franchise to set up shop in Norwich either. Not only do Bella Italia have two restaurants, there's also a Pizza Express, a Prezzo, not to mention two Pizza Hut restaurants if these warrant inclusion in the same bracket. So in essence, it isn't easy to establish an Italian restaurant in the City, particuarly when you are competing with Bella Italia's reasonable prices, warm decor, and half price student Wednesdays at their Red Lion Street restaurant. In addition to these challenges, the day I visited Figaro wasn't exactly ideal. It was a rainy, miserable, frankly quite horrible day. The sort of day where there is simply no let up from the continiual downpour, and eventually after becoming as soaked to the bone as it is possible to be, you eventually miserably relent and accept your fate. This taken into consideration I wasn't in a particuarly good mood. I was in fact, in the mood to find fault, and to take out my sodden state on someone.

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The restaurant itself is located near John Lewis on the corner next to a roundabout. Far from an ideal location, next to a main road and isolated from the majority of Norwich's through traffic. It's another classic case of spiralling lease costs for the most prized restaurant locations pricing out independent eateries. The outside looked a bit like the cafe winebar year 11 graphics project I did. I got a B- for mine, let that tell you all you need to know about the outside of Figaro. The interior was what I might describe as 'faux Pizza Express'. The granite floor tiles and white tables made it abundantly clear that that was the intended aesthetic. Perhaps if the weather had shown some signs of improvement it might have looked more fresh, clean and contemporary, but in the dull light of the grey tones overhead it seemed a little cold and uninviting. More worryingly, the manager shuffled towards us with the air of someone who was not used to having customers to serve. Two of us ordered pizzas, one meat feast, the other with chicken and olives, whilst the third member of our party ordered a dish with salmon and salad. The pizzas were fine, the trouble is, they needed to be better than that. I was rooting for this place, I genuinely was, but in essence the food was at best no better than Bellia Italia or Pizza Express, in fact it was probably a little worse. There wasn't a great deal of salmon with the salad either, and what was there seemed a little bland.

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Figaro's biggest problem appeared to be that it is trying too hard to imitate the franchise blue print. The trouble with copycats is that they are rarely as good as their inspiration, and Figaro was no different. Granted, the location of the restaurant is unfortunate, but it is not terminal. It is still a walkable distance from the town centre, and people will make an effort to travel for good food. By copying a business that is already in a prime location, with an established brand name, serving similiar if not better food than your own, you are surely doomed to fail. Still, if you feel like being a little more ambitious than dining at the usual haunts, you may feel the desire to try one of Norwich's only independent Italian restaurants. Who knows, your ambition may rub off on them.

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.

UK Best Pizza and Kebab, September 27th, 2007

Best Pizza and Kebab

60 Prince of Wales Road

Norwich

Norfolk

United Kingdom

NR1 1BL

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It seems a little presumptuous doesn't it? Pretentious even. The self proclaimed benchmark of Prince of Wales road drunken early hours eateries. It's the sort of claim that gives you reason to try and find faults where you might not have looked for them before. The decor is standard kebab shop fare. Chairs welded to tables, presumably to minimise the risk of angry drunken furniture throwing. There's a very eighties theme to the table patterns, not that that gave any particular insight in to the food to follow, but it seemed worthy of note nonetheless. The service itself was bizzare. I ordered a bacon burger, expecting the standard wait which would feel like nigh-on forever. Instead, what I had ordered appeared instantly, like a magican conjouring a rabbit from a hat. They seemed to think that they'd stumbled on the greatest idea since social networking websites. Cook everything beforehand, leave it on the side, and when someone orders anything, it can be served instantly. In my then drunken stupor, I naturally thought that this was the most unbelievably fantastic idea ever to have been devised. Come the morning, and of course it didn't take much common sense to spot flaws in their logic. Things that should have been hot were cold. Things that should have been melted were congealed. Salad that should have been fresh had absorbed in to the bread. In short, it was horrendously stupid, and more than that, it was downright dangerous. Takeaways are a volume business, especially down Prince of Wales road at 2AM, but words fail me at the complete disregard this place has for its own customers. How hard is it to cook burgers or cheesy chips to order? What's wrong with these people? There's simply no excusing it. You can fault bad food, bad service and bad surroundings, but none of these things compare to a propriator so stupid as to risk poisoning their customers. Dear oh dear.

Corky's, September 19th 2007

Corky's Van
UEA
University Plain
NR4 7TJ
United Kingdom
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Twenty past one, Wednesday morning. The end is nigh for another LCR, drunken students begin to tail away exposing the mass of empty bottles and plastic pint glasses which lie on the sticky floor underfoot. Outside, the night is clear and cold. Gaggles of students huddle together excitedly talking about the night that has just been, and oh God you're hungry, so incredibly hungry. And there it is, Corky's burger van, dispensing burgers to the masses like Moses with the fish and loaves of bread. The only way it could be any easier for you as the consumer, is if the propriators fed you the burger and helped you digest it. It's an institution, it's always there, long after you've granduated the van will still be there.

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On to the burgers themselves, they're not great. Not that it's of great significance, Corky's could serve gruel and it would still make money, and they know it. This is cheap meat, cheap processed cheese, cheap buns, real bottom rung quality produce. Do the customers care? No, of course they don't. Corky's isn't trying portray itself as anything more than it is. It's a back to basics operation, supply and demand. You know what you're getting, you can rely on it. Long after the current class have all graduated, that van will still be there dishing out instant relief to the early morning munchies. Not that they're the only ticket in town, there are other vans pushing the same thing. I vaguely recollect one which was actually barbequing them, but I only saw it was which has made me wonder if I was actually just so drunk my memory concocted it.

Verdict: Given the poor quality of the ingredients, it seems a bit of a travesty to give Corky's three stars, but there's a time and place for fine dining and the immediate aftermath of a student night isn't it. What Corky's do may be simple, but they do it well and it's hard to argue with that.

Tenlu, August 24th 2007

Tenlu

28 Earlham West Centre

Norwich

NR5 8AD

United Kingdom

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First it was Gillian McKeith ruining sausages for the great consuming public, then it was Jamie Oliver with his chicken nugget expose. If takeaway has one virtue, then it is the light relief it provides from the obsessive calorie counting and preachiness from the healthy eating crusaders. Of course, that argument has its limits. Tenlu's food is not good for you, and it's not a particularly well kept secret. Try leaving one of their dishes out on the side overnight, and analyse the congealed, greasy, heart attack inducing sauce that is in the process of making its way slowly through your digestive system the following morning. The benefits? Well, it's cheap. If you spend over £15, they'll even include some complimentary mini spring roles or samosas, as well as the standard prawn crackers you pretty much everywhere. It's just hard not to acknowledge that what you're eating is so blatently and unashamedly bad for you. The grease on the brown paper bag, the slightly soggy noodles, it all screams 'don't do it! Don't be stupid!' It doesn't sit particularly well in your stomach either. I've felt ill on numerous occasions, quickly regretting the who episode like a divorcee with their former partner's name tattooed across their arm.

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Generally you can expect a 45 minute wait, and the food usually arrives tepid, so microwaving is advisable. Should you have to put up with that? No, not really. It's open til 11 nightly, but closed during holidays. In truth, Tenlu used to be the Chinese takeaway on speed dial in my house, but frankly given the extensive competition, you can do better. It's all style, but there's no substance to it. It isn't filling. Full of saturates, salt and God knows what else, it leaves you wondering what the hell is in your food. We all know that takeaway is bad for us, and that if your diet consisted of takeaway and that alone, your liver would probably pickle itself, but Tenlu are worse for this unenviable characteristic than most. Give it a wide birth, I intend to.

The Copper Kettle, 29th July, 2007

The Copper Kettle
Lower Goat Ln
Norwich
NR2 1EL
01603 626870
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It's easy to miss Lower Goat Lane, hidden as it is, behind the flourescent fanfare of the facades of the Tesco Metro that lies in front of it. It is, however, an intruiging little street with all manner of small indepdent shops selling or offering various services. The Copper Kettle is hard to find unless you know you're looking for it. Aside from being located some way off the beaten track, it just seemed to blend in to its surroundings like a well kept secret. The interior was strange. Gloomy, dark and slightly dingy, adorned with various copper kettles, and idea which wasn't as clever an idea as the person who conceived it probably thought it was. To add to the confusion the tables were clad with brightly covered, laminate table clothes depicting fruit and breakfasts which seemed rather a token and inadequate measure to counter the subdued ambience. Personally I might have invested the kettle money in to something more urgently required like, say, windows perhaps. Out of the darkness a large woman moved ungracefully towards us, looking like what I can only describe as a Gothically dressed Aunt Bessie. She appeared about as cheery as you might expect someone dressed almost entirely in black, dwelling in equally sombre surroundings to be. We sit. 'What do you want?' She asks, giving us precious little time to purvey the large, leather bound menus that are obscuring our view of each other. I don't know, a welcoming smile? A loud, cheery, booming laugh? With this apparently off the menu, I settled for some breakfast. The food didn't come at the same time, which is always a little irritating and makes the place seem a little amateurish. There are few things more annoying, in a breakfasting context at least, than either having to eat with the rest of your hungry party watching you, or being part of the hungry party watching someone else.
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However, the biggest occurance of note came at the end of the meal when we asked to pay for our food. What followed was a ridiculous disagreement over orange juice. A member of our party ordered a small glass, but was served a big one. Frankly, he wasn't to know that, and it was never made clear that it was a big glass when it arrived. He was then charged for the big glass, and when he noted that he had ordered a small one, Bessie concluded that whilst that might be true, since he had drunk was in the midst of digesting a large glass he would have to pay for one. Frankly, a ludicrously stupid way to treat customers. The place already looked like a gathering of picnic tables in the midst of deepest Mordor as it was, service with a smile was the only thing capable of salvaging it. Surly, morose restuarant oweners who endeavour to make you feel that they are doing you a favour by serving you aside, the food was fairly average and quite overpriced. The leather bound compendium of breakfast options to choice from was also a little excessive, but neither of those issues did as much to ruin the experience as a whole more than the uncomfortalble uneasiness of sitting there, and the woeful customer service.

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.

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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.

Passage to India, 3rd March, 2007

The Passage to India

45 Magdalen Street

Norwich

NR3 1LQ

01603 762836

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I remember the endearing way that Tombland was described in my UEA prospectus' new students guide. The centre of culture in Norwich, cuisines from every continent in the world at your finger tips, the envy of all East Anglia. These attributes were not immediately visible. For one thing, there are no cashpoints anywhere. It doesn't sound like a particularly big deal, but considering as little as three minutes ago I'd paid a taxi driver to take me to where I wanted to be and avoid the bad weather, this venture in to the brisk cold night air seemed to be making my taxi fare rather a waste of time. Not that the lack of holes in the wall could really be blamed upon The Passage To India itself. First things first, there is no actual passage. No Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe styled cupboard to walk through, it was very much a metaphorical sort of passage. Does promising passages that don't physically exist warrant a deduction in marks? Well yes, yes it does.

Inside it couldn't be more typical if it tried, and in truth, that is exactly what you want. Slightly naff, out dated wallpaper, white tablecloths, crooked pictures of the Taj Mahal hanging sporadically throughout. Not forgetting of course, the standard cliche Indian sita soundtrack bubbling away in the background. It was missing one thing though, people. It didn't have any. There are a lot of restaurants down these streets, probably too many to supply demand, and this place was, if not completely dead, then certainly in some kind of deep slumber.

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As far as the food went, I thought it was pretty good. Nothing was really overly spicy, and it all came quickly enough and there was plenty of it. It was all really quite standard. Unfortunately, as a result business failing to boom as it should have, there were three waiters constantly surveying the table trying to find things to do which was a little intrusive. Standard Indian beers like Cobra, Kingfisher and Tiger are all on tap which is a nice, and in my view essential, addition and they all cost less than three pounds a pint which fairly reasonable.

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Verdict: Overall The Passage to India is an extremely standard Indian restaurant, that doesn't really do anything wrong, but doesn't do anything extrordinary either. The 10% student discount makes it decent value, and their lack of customers make it a good choice for large bookings of eight or more people. Whilst the atmosphere is decidedly lacking, and especially on week nights, this is less noticeable if your party is large enough to make some noise of its own.