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.

xx

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.

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.

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.

Master Chef, March 2nd 2007

Master Chef
87 Prince of Wales Road
Norwich
Norfolk
United Kingdom
NR1 1DG
01603 765555

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There's a sign on the door of Master Chef with the words 'fast food' written on it. I can only assume that this sign refers to the speed at which their food is served, and whilst this is only implied and never promised, I still take issue with it. I suppose it's probably a matter of context. In the context of the time it might take to formulate an Israeli-Palestinien peace deal it was practically instantaneous. Of course, in the context of how long it might take me to starve to death, the results were far less positive. The name master chef appeared a little ambitious too, considering that I was little over 10 yards from the the 'kitchen' watching my frozen pizza base being covered in toppings and sent through the pizza-o-matic machine. Again of course, it's only implied that the sign is referring to the man behind the counter, it could just be an absurdly talented machine. Lots to think about then, and all this before we'd even stared long and hard at the big laminate boards and decided what we wanted to eat. No matter, on to the food itself.

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The variety of pizzas is good here. There are plenty of different toppings, and plenty of different sizes. The process of actually producing them however, is a bit like watching people washing their clothes with mangles and basins before washing machines and tumble dryers were invented. It's just painfully slow. It was in fact so slow, that our party took to giving drunken relationship advice to a girl whose boyfriend 'pushes me and calls me fat' in the mean time. Our advice amounted to her being better off going out with a chimp, which was interesting, given that said boyfriend was outside climbing scaffolding. For the record she was fat. Still, a little uncalled for. For those who are interested, she eventually decided that for all his flaws, she loved him. I don't think we helped that much, and once our food turned up we sort of lost interest. As I've mentioned before, these sorts of restaurants don't operate under the same criteria as others. You know the food isn't going to be of high quality, and that by and large you're going to be herded through like cattle. The least you can hope for is for speed, these are afterall volume businesses. It is here where Master Chef critically doesn't deliver.

Norwich Kebab and Pizza House, January 6th 2007

Norwich Kebab and Pizza House

81 Prince of Wales Road
Norwich
NR1 1BL

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You know the scenario, you've had a lot to drink. You told yourself you'd know when you'd had enough, you'd keep yourself under control, you'd show some restraint. That hasn't happened. In your drunken stupor, you decide that despite the cost, you could really go for a huge burger, chips and a coke because fuck it, it's only money right? So you wander to the nearest cashpoint, where various other people with the same idea are already queueing. What I can't understand about the Norwich Kebab and Pizza House is its on a slope. Strangely it's not the same slope that Prince of Wales Road is on, it slopes in a completely different direction all of its own. Combined with the balance problems that have already developed as a result of said beverage consumption, it just makes a mockery of the convenience that this eatery is supposed to be providing. So there you are, grasping £30 of notes because you couldn't focus on the cash point screen enough to choose the amount you really wanted, so you just pushed a button, any button, as long it dispensed enough currency to exchange for food. Then you proceed to take on some ludicrous Generation Game style challenge of staggering up the slope to the counter to order food. Having acquired your food, you look for a seat and guess what? The seats are cut at the bottom to make straight in comparison to the slope. One of them is wobbly, which only really adds to the challenge as a whole. So, eventually you haul yourself onto one of the stools, like an adventurer escaping an erupting volcano, a river of lava slowly flowing over all that stands before it, and climb to safety. Once there, you'll find that the chili sauce is rather good, and the rest is rather not.

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Verdict: I often talk about the little things making the difference when opting for your early hours eatery. An unecessarily large slope, when rightly or wrongly, you're feeling extremely lazy is all in all, pretty bad news. The food doesn't do enough to make this amount of effort remotely worthwhile, and there are better options for this kind of food as near as next door. All in all, nothing much to write home about.