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.

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.