Gourmet Burger Kitchen

I don't really understand this whole 'kitchen' business. Don't get me wrong, I know what a kitchen is - I'm not an idiot, I just don't understand why these big franchises think that the idea of eating in one seems to alluring. Would I eat in my own kitchen? Probably not, it seems slightly lazy, suggestive of being so incredibly greedy that I was unable to make it to the living room or dining room table before consuming my food. Still, here we were, at the gourmet burger kitchen. As this was to celebrate my vegetarian sister's birthday, it seemed like an odd choice.

There were a lot of problems, the place was just cold - not just physically, but it was decorated like an art gallery. There should have been old American number plates and road signs on the wall, and red and white chequered table clothes, a massive glasses of coke with loads of ice. None of that was there, drinks only came bottled in small sizes, you had to order everything at the counter, there were no table clothes. You had to order chips seperately. They'd just gotten the whole concept completely wrong.

Taking on the burger market is a pretty big ask. People like burgers, if you disect your average student, they're 30% beef, and 3% ketchup (that may not be true). My point is, people have a large basis for comparison, so if you intend to charge £12 for a burger and chips, it'd better be good. I ordered mine with bacon and avocado, which I wasn't particularly confident about. It turned up

The sesame bun was cold, and seemed a little bit stale. My scepticism over the avocado proved to be entirely justified, it just didn't work.

I thought overall that the chain's pettiness was its main downfall. They only needed to look across the road to Nando's to see how these sort of places can work if marketed properly. Chips should have been included and should condiments, drinks should have been bigger and refillable, and it should all have come on one plate rather some absurd form of burger tapas. It's ludicrous penny pinching to charge for condiments which would have cost the restaurant peanuts, but charging for them just creates

Verdict: Extremely disappointing, paying a heavy price for being overpriced and average in an oversaturated market. Not the worst burger I've ever had, but then I could have been to Burger King three times for the price.

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.