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.