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.