23 March 2008
Sainsbury Centre, UEA
The thrill of playing chicken with the rain passes midway round the UEA broad, as we are belly-punched by the sort of hunger found only in the great outdoors, at least twenty minutes from the nearest cake. Torn between the Sainsbury Centre or a gobfull of bulrushes, we take the path more trodden.
With only three sandwiches to choose between, I grab one round of Norfolk Dapple and chutney, and, despite myself, one of prawns with lemon and dill mayonnaise.
“Why the reticence?”, you may ask. The answer is simple: after estate agents and people with exceptionally small eyes, there is nothing I distrust more than prawn sandwiches.
Unlike Mrs Wifey’s fear of aviaries (ie the birds will tunnel out and batter her) or her fear of convertibles (ie they all flip upside down), this prejudice is quite rational. Statistically speaking, I’ve just had too many dodgy experiences (ie with estate agents, prawn sandwiches, and people with exceptionally small eyes).
In the event, however, the prawns are fresh and meaty, while the tartness of the lemon prevents the mayonnaise from getting richly out of hand. Likewise, the sweetness of the chutney checks the umami of the local cheese, again making a perfectly balanced sandwich.
Of course, man cannot live on bread alone. Before I’m ready to face the elements once more it’s going to take (a) sugar (a whole bunch of) and (b) caffeine (a clinically dangerous dose).
I slug back an Americano. Mildly bitter, like the memory of a history detention circa 1987, it doesn’t just pep me up, it hits like a battering ram made of Jackie Chans. My pulse races as my veins swell with electricity and I become slightly panicky about something indefinable.
Mrs Wifey’s hot chocolate, meanwhile, is a work of art: hot creamy milk in a cup thickly lined with a dark cocoa-rich fondue, topped off with a cappuccino-like froth and chocolate powder. Other café proprietors could learn much from this.
Bolstering the beverages we choose two coaster-sized squares of shortcake (not too sweet, not too dry, not too greasy) and wad of date flapjack (again, a possible contender for best in class).
As the coffee and cake hit the digestive system during the subsequent march around the cloth and culture exhibition, I realise that while I may not know much about art, I certainly do know what makes me nervous around textiles.
Keywords: biscuits and pictures
Eat here: hearty arty lunches
24 February 2008
Trattoria Rustica, Princes Street
The table wasn’t ready so they jammed us in the crypt for best part of an hour. Thirty minutes later (at best) they took our order. Half an hour later we got our first glimpse of the starters.
That was October 2006, the last time we ate at Trattoria Rustica. While collectively certain the meal was exquisite, our recall likely lacks objectivity. All I know for sure is that the youngest member of our party had been polished off by the time we saw the antipasto and it looked like I would be eaten next.
Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Trattoria Rustica wasn’t our first choice of venue tonight. What we actually wanted was steak – to be precise, the meatier than thou Kobe steak they peddle at Rare. This – our long scheduled Christmas treat – had been twice scotched by ongoing sickness, and we were mainlining Bisto in order to reach that beefy high.
Things weren’t looking up: Rare was fully booked, and so rather than getting third-time-lucky we actually got three strikes and out. As for the hot beef injection contingency plan, the less said the better. Thus, with magnanimity and desperation in equal measure, we returned to Trattoria Rustica.
This time, we knew to book an early table. Sure enough, the restaurant was brimming by seven; it was no place for last-minute chancers or chubby waiting staff.
A string of waitresses offered us drinks, darting hither and thither with much more pronto to their pace than we recognised from last time (or, for that matter, Italy in general).
Our starters arrived within minutes, and as per the prime directive of all British trattorias, the Robocondimentor threatened everything but the wine with pepper and parmesan.
Having shooed away the pepper donna, Mrs Wifey got stuck into the delicious spread of baby spinach, raisins, almonds and prosciutto doused in a balsamic dressing. Meanwhile, I chose the Parma ham, mozzarella and tomato on crostini. Anyone who can make a better cheese and bacon sandwich, please start that orderly queue right now.
Matters bovine as yet unaddressed, we both refuelled with beef medallions, cooked with cognac, mustard and barello wine. It may not have been the flesh of pampered spa-retreat cows, but was still soft, pink and plentiful. A bit like Dawn French’s buttocks.
So is everything forgiven? Oh yes. Although visions of a mooning Vicar of Dibley I can do without.
Keywords: do you want cheese with that?
Eat here: in pairs and early
12 January 2008
Nando’s, Red Lion Street
Christmas sales: the best of times, the worst of times. The primal urge to hunt and gather after a season of avarice, sloth and binge drinking; the hysteria of the great unwashed, sharpening their teeth for the Primark Battle Royale and camping outside Curry’s for a billboard-sized plasma TV.
While I’d normally rather chew batteries than endure the bedlam, the need to acquire a mattress is pressing. And so, into the valley of discount we ride, braced for an afternoon of feigning sleep in successive department stores.
The absurdity is not lost on us – after all, mattress testing is to mattress usage what the Pride Festival is to the Soviet May Day Parade.
It’s not that I’m above sleeping fully dressed, or, for that matter, getting into bed without first removing my shoes (although I’ve only got Mrs Wifey’s word on that).
What I will not support, however, is sweaty shoppers watching me spoon the wife. It’s just undignified. Several dormitories later, I therefore dig in my heels, and (in the name of realism) refuse to continue until she fetches the duvet.
With no comfort blanket forthcoming, I vote for comfort eating instead, and, having seen Nando’s purportedly famous chicken across the road, suggest we pop over and roost a while.
Inside, it’s not what I was expecting. From the looks of it, I’d assumed it was a restaurant. Having been shown to our seats, we’re directed back to the till to order and pay.
‘Pay before I eat?!’ cries my inner bourgeois pig. ‘What kind of a half-cocked chicken shack is this?!’
Reason overcomes my middle-class prejudices After all, is a fast-food joint that looks like a restaurant really that odd? I mean, in Paris, so they tell me, you can buy a beer in McDonald’s…
…while in Norwich you can buy mash with your chicken.
As combinations go, it sounds as intuitive as custard and vinegar. I choose not to choose mash.
It’s a classic rock/hard place trade-off. The fries are uninspiring – like low-calorie communion wafers without the spiritual benefits – not a good look for a joint specialising in chicken and chips.
The peri-peri chicken, by contrast, is wolfable, and easily worth the paltry £16 it costs for a so-called “whole chicken” and a couple of side orders. Coming in four quarters, however, said chicken is mathematically rather than physically complete. Expect pedants to cry fowl.
Keywords: hot chicks
Eat here: chilli sauce
02 December 2007
Passage to India, Magdalen Street
23 October 2007
School holidays tend not to work out as intended. The intention is: sleep late, watch Battle of the Planets, hang around the shops, drink dodgy hooch. What normally happens is: spend all day editing tedious manuscripts by tedious authors who talk tediously about concretizing the self vis-à-vis the decline in seasonal sprout purchasing since 1975 (no, really).
As to how the most recent half-term break has been panning out, gentle readers, I’ll give you three guesses (i.e. one each).
Two days in and we are already stamping our feet in frustrated fury. We demand treats – fine wines, sweet viands, light sugared cakes, and sherbet of various sorts. Failing that, beer and curry.
Passage to India is the closest curry house, as well as the only local one I know that actively boasts celebrity patrons. Well, one celebrity, anyway. Well, one right honourable gentleman of dubious fame who happened to turn up at the same time as someone with a camera: Charles Clarke.
Said political heavyweight (pun intended) is not here tonight, however. Having spent the last ten years with his face in the Westminster gravy boat, it is conceivable that he has become more select in his venue choice, or at least keener for larger portions.
In fact, there aren’t many people here at all. I count six – including Mrs Wifey and me. Depending on how many folk are in the kitchen, we’re very possibly outnumbered by staff. This may account for why the heating appears to have been switched off. By the time the food arrives, we’ve lost one-third of the patrons, and with them a significant proportion of the restaurant’s residual heat.
The onion nan, chicken lucknow and lamb shatkora help restore bodily warmth, and at Mrs Wifey’s request, the tiny waiter is only too happy to share his impeccable knowledge of his product. Until he sees her red shoes, that is, and is consumed by such belly-aching laughter that, in a textbook case of masculine task overload, is incapacitated.
This is not so much due to incessant guffawing – more that he can simply no longer remember *how* to speak English. Sentences of free-form jazz convulse forth as he giggles uncontrollably – the best sense we can make for the next two minutes is ‘everyone has got to see these’. We brace ourselves for a troupe of tittering kitchen hands.
Fortunately, all we get is the bill.
Eat here: in great numbers
Keywords: ruby murray, ruby tuesday, ruby slippers
04 November 2007
Tootsies, Chapelfield Plain
People of Norfolk ‘do different’. Nonetheless, different has a scale – I’d love to think the city is ready for bacon & egg ice cream and blancmange made of numbers, but this is, after all, Delia’s turf, not Heston’s.
My own search for perfection is less scientifically rigorous than that of Mr Blumenthal – all I want to know is where to find the best burger round here, not least because right now, Mrs Wifey needs beef.
I’m not sure what my vegetarian family eat when feeling a little peaky (a *really* fat mushroom?), but in this house the cure is steak. Failing that, a burger is a good second-best, or, in the event of mastication fatigue, meatshake.
In the grey area between plans A and B falls the steak sandwich. At Tootsies, this also constitutes the *healthy* option (it comes with salad instead of fries). This way forward lies Mrs Wifey’s lunch.
I, on the other hand, am a sucker for regional burger lore, which alleges that Tootsies once claimed to be Norwich’s burgermeister. However, it would seem that the self-styled Chelsea of the municipal burger league has since fallen on leaner times; its patties are no longer described as superlative, but more simply ‘famous’. Still, having never met celebrity food of any description, I’m brimming with eager anticipation, autograph book at the ready.
Stoking my excitement further, the waitress brings over the condiments. Four types of mustard! Four! Wholegrain, Dijon, English and that bright yellow ick that looks like canary cement with additional E102, E110 and monosodium glutamate! (That last exclamation mark was possibly excessive, but sometimes that punctuation surf is too hard to quit.)
With this banquet of mustard the ambassador really is spoiling us – but frankly such choice overfaces me. I choose none of the above. Instead, I stuff the iconic burger with the onion marmalade. It’s dark, sloppy, sweet and gorgeous (like me, in onion form). The house ketchup, meanwhile, is thick, rich and delicious (no comment) and a perfect foil for the generically dull fries.
Tootsies’ burgers look and taste like they’re made of beef. Real beef. Maybe not free-range longhorn cattle, but some fine meat all the same. And considering some of the gristle round here, that goes a long way.
Famous, however? Again, there are scales. On a scale of Trisha Goddard to Admiral Nelson, this burger is, at the very least, Stephen Fry.
Eat here: sacred cow
Keywords: where's the beef?
28 October 2007
Mambo Jambo, Lower Goat Lane
I love:
(a) beer, and
(b) cocktails.
This does not make me unique. Indeed, research suggests that I share these tastes with several million other people, at the very least.
Surely then, it is a truth universally acknowledged that (b) should never be created from (a). So fundamental is this, I suggest, that it has been recognised since we first made a point of not committing murder or coveting our neighbours’ oxen. In short, one simply does not do that kind of thing.
The French, however, are not renowned for their respect for society’s mores or, for that matter, common decency in general, and hence have had the impudence to create Desperados, the tequila flavoured beer.
The cultural anomaly of pseudo-Mexican French lager in an ostensibly Tex-Mex English restaurant is inappropriate, but not insurmountable. But the sheer gall (sheer gaul?) required to create this … this Frankenlager, constitutes at best a crime against the palate, and at worst, a declaration of war with Mexico.
I am nothing but fair, however, and I recognise that it would be unfair to damn an establishment on the grounds of one beer. Indeed, Mambo Jambo serves a number of other, more appropriate, beers, so you can sleep soundly at night, safe in the knowledge that the restaurant is unlikely to draw Norwich into any Franco-Mexican fracas.
This particular Saturday was, against all odds and predictions, a beautiful sunny day, so we chose to sit by the window, from which you could see for absolutely inches: roof tiles, a crack of sky, and, if I correctly recall, some gutter. To date, it was the worst window seat I’ve known anywhere in the world, or on Ryanair.
With our non-conflict lagers, Mrs Wifey and I had the cajun burgers and a mound of fries. While not *the* best burgers in Norwich, they prove better than many of those to be had locally, even despite the exceedingly tired tomato. And, frankly, it was a blessed change to see a place that actually serves fries as – wait for it – fries.
Mambo Jambo’s most obvious competitor is Pedros. Broadly speaking, however, it has fewer sombreros and looks less like a public toilet. Possibly this makes it more Tex than Mex.
Eat here: come for the food not the view
Key words: beer, is, not, a, mixer
30 September 2007
The Library, Guildhall Hill
At six and three quarters, being the oldest person in the room affords a certain air of esteem. One can look down on one’s peers with lofty arrogance informed by world-weary experience. *Tch* and *tut*, my little rugrat friends, what little you know of the world! Kathryn White asked me to sit next to her in assembly yesterday, and I said, like, no way lady! Dude, I’m a P-L-A-Y-A, and ain’t no crazy ho gonna cramp my style – HELL NO!
At thirty-three (minus one day), the same does not hold true. First of all, sitting next to Kathryn White does *not* mean I’m going to marry her. Second, propping up the bar at the Mustard Lounge, I fear I may well be old enough to have fathered some of the punters. Third, it’s way past my bedtime.
Come the morning, I am not feeling sprightly. By the grace of God, however, I’m not hungover, as such, and can at least mooch into town without too much ado.
I’ve been meaning to eat at The Library for a while, but have never managed to arrive in time for lunch. Today, however, I can sit there, warm and fuzzy with smugness, if a little woozy from sleep deprivation and the really high ceiling.
The fish options look good, but for reasons self-evident to anyone but vegetarians and teetotallers, the curative properties of the lah-di-dah fry-up seem more appropriate. We both order the hand-cut chips, thick-cut bacon and fried egg: it is triumphant, standing us in good stead for another night of acting half our age.
The combination of book-lined shelves and purple décor make the place an ideal location for nerdy goths. Nerdy nerds, however, will despair at the filing of said books, which have been lined up with wanton disregard for any established classification system, happily marrying Bruce Lee with crochet and motor racing with Middlemarch.
Such irregularity was echoed in the friendly, if erratic service, and the disappointing dessert. The espresso mousse was relatively feeble, with texture like bread in a swimming pool and a flavour more in line with Revels than tiramisu; frankly, I was more excited by my subsequent trip to the toilet.
This not to damn the dish unfairly, however, as The Library’s exquisite toilets are perfect for restroom aficionados, and are surely shortlisted among the finest in Norwich.
I’ve seen the future of blogging, and it’s everywhere I’ve peed in norwich.
Keywords: books, bacon and, er, bog?
Eat here: on your purple day