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

Tootsies, Chapelfield Plain

26 October 2007

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?

Mambo Jambo, Lower Goat Lane

13 October 2007

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

The Library, Guildhall Hill

21 September 2007

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

Norwegian Blue, Riverside Leisure Park

15 September 2007

The Cumbersome Gift sounds very exciting. I’ve not received a truly cumbersome birthday present since my Action GT Crossbows and Catapults Battleset, and if this is fifty per cent as exciting, it’ll be, well, *very* exciting.

It’s virtually 4 o’clock by the time The Cumbersome Gift arrives home. Sure, it may have kyboshed our Plan A lunch date, but having (I’m told) been approvingly cooed over by shoppers with Less Cumbersome Items, I am quite prepared to forgive it.

With the Cumbersome Gift safely docked in Mrs Wifey’s wardrobe, Plan B demands somewhere (a) prepared to provide lunch and (b) willing to let us soak up the last drops of sun. We stumbled to Norwegian Blue.

The next half an hour held interesting times: either we had breached our credit at the Bank of Karma, or the chef was too busy pining for the fjords to concentrate on the task in hand.

Mrs Wifey’s roast chicken arrived in an unconventional form, namely a butterflied, griddled breast. With a moisture level of zero and the structural integrity of HMS Belfast, any bacteria it may once have contained had quite certainly ceased to be.

Primary school dinners excepted, it was the third worst meal I’d ever seen. (The worst was a chicken sandwich on a Ryanair flight; the second worst was the burger sitting in front of me right now.)

Like the ‘roast’ chicken, my burger was as dry as a prohibition desert rat gorged on silica gel. On the plus side, at least I had a tablespoon of warm coleslaw to help it down.

Getting it down would of course assume that one could dissect the food into bite-size chunks in the first place. In the present instance, the outside of the burger was scorched solid, like a leather pasty. It would have been simpler, and no doubt more tasty, to tuck into my wallet.

With so many urban myths about kitchen staff vandalising food, I prefer never to send back my meal (being more an E. coli culture than a foodstuff, the aforementioned sandwich doesn’t count).

Exhibit A crossed that line. I got a refund instead – they couldn’t tamper with that.

Although if they did, it’d still be tastier than their pre-match menu.

Keywords: dead parrot
Eat here: if you’ve been nailed there

Bella Italia, Exchange Street

30 June 2007

Banking, in itself, is seldom enjoyable. It’s even worse when you’re drifting in and out of consciousness due to critically low sugar levels. This I blame on the BBC. They had moved Doctor Who *again*.

I was well on the way to town when I discovered this (Mrs Wifey was in the vein for clothes shopping, so I’d packed the TV guide for light reading).

I’d left the house hungry, planning to pick up something trashy from the Bakers Oven to tide me over till we could munch on something more balanced (half a glacé cherry, I’m told, is not a vegetable portion).

The Belgian bun plan was thus nixed, and I trudged home, reset the video and started the expedition anew. The physical distress of the ordeal, however, was starting to tell and the hunger storms were wracking my frail body. Twenty minutes later, the perspex barrier in the Halifax was the only thing preventing me chewing off the clerk’s juicy face.

The next few minutes are hazy, but when I came to, we had evidently made it to the closest place that didn’t hazard our path with staircase.

Richard showed us to our table with a buongiorno, a couple of pregos and a lilting Irish brogue. Extra marks were scored for bringing the mineral water without pointless lemon garnish, but subsequently lost by forgetting the olives.

True to the style of themed bistro chains, Bella Italia is decorated (by the numbers) according to its ostensible country of origin. Unrealistic it may be, but it’s much less gratingly executed than at Café Rouge, although at least the latter’s abuse of foreign tongues extends no further than a cursory bon appétit.

I reminded Riccardo about the olives – he responded in apologetic English and gave them to us on the house.

To protect my body from excessive suffering, my brain had been shutting down its sensors; with one bite of this manna they exploded back into life. I can’t objectively testify to the quality of Bella Italia’s olives, but at this point they were definitely at least the third best thing I’d ever eaten.

Regrettably, the campagna and quattro stagioni pizzas weren’t in the same league. They weren’t *bad* as such, but with Pizza Express or Zizzi offering twice as much taste for the same money, at least a third of Bella Italia’s menu is redundant.

Eat here: maybe pasta
Keywords: the Italian job lot

Bar Tapas, Exchange Street

9 June 2007

Saturday was bland. The sky was bland. The weather? Bland. Between breakfast and lunch, the highlight was the inserts in the free paper.

We drew up the agenda for the trip to town. The most exciting item was a visit to the building society to update Mrs Wifey’s contact details. This was two years overdue.

Lost in the thrill of executing this administrative exercise, we found we had drifted to Pulse, the vegetarian café bar.

I generally consider vegetarianism to be wrong. Not *wrong* like Nazism, but nonetheless, an unnecessary crime against the palate. Still, I try not to be prejudiced (hey, some of my best friends are vegetarian!). On reading the menu, however, my excitement was measured, contained and humanely destroyed.

Vegetarian food is not strictly required to be tedious, but then one could say the same for house music. The day had already had blandness in spades; the last thing it needed was a chickpea burger too.

Instead we took the toro by the horns and headed for tapas.

Bar Tapas is another restaurant without ground-floor space – this being dedicated to Brambles instead. It’s also a personal favourite where, due to my tapas menu disorder, I inevitably order more than is sensible or healthy.

The walls are covered in posters for bullfights and similar Spanish paraphernalia; the ceiling is populated with football shirts, possibly from former Norwich City FC players. The smokers’ den is chock-full, but we have the no-smoking room to ourselves, and sit under a window that offers daylight but no view.

Due to the price of real estate and the onerous restrictions of health and safety legislation, the sardines were grilled rather than flame-charred in a scuttled fishing boat. However, they were still mighty fine, and an excellent reminder of everything good on the Costa del Sol.

The ham and artichoke was also tasty, with a garlic and butter sauce so glorious that gluten-intolerants would queue to dip their bread in it.

As for the meatballs cooked with potatoes, peppers and peas, I’d probably describe them as a new all-time favourite in the world-series meatball rankings. However, my meatballistic fickleness is notoriously bad, and I reserve the right to change my mind next week.

In all, it’s a wholesome experience, and as a paisano on a modest budget, that suits me down to the ground.

Eat here: don’t wait till manana
Keywords: ostentatious carnivorousness

St Benedicts Restaurant, St Benedicts St.

1 June 2007

The massively pregnant Sloane and her husband had stolen our table. This was particularly galling – it was *our* table, and we had specifically booked it. OK, so we’d only ever sat there a couple of times over the last four years or so, but still, I felt we had a claim.

I am, however, a true gent, and avoided a scene by simply harrumphing under my breath and looking momentarily unsettled, before sitting a few feet away.

‘I *am* heavily pregnant, you know,’ she announced at the end of each course, clearly believing the staff to be both blind and stupid. Pregnancy was also the basis for her complaining about each dish, with logic as sound as ‘I can’t eat this! I have a yacht!’ At least her pinot grigio was agreeable.

Despite this, we were not about to let our anniversary be spoiled by furniture annexation and horsey claptrap. Neither were we going to be upset by the middle-aged chap and his well-heeled strumpet kicking up stink and walking out after their drinks hadn’t arrived within five minutes of arrival. We were going to enjoy ourselves even if we were to be the only happy clientele that evening.

The fried goat cheese starter was unapologetically good, but the slice of delicious plump-breasted pigeon was exceptional – seared outside, but raw ruddy-pink and tender within, like the inside of an infant’s cheek.

At this point I should stress that I do not, and never have eaten *any* part of an infant. Eating children is illegal – even in France.

The pigeon was a tough act to follow, and so the duck and merguez main course, though perfectly competent, were almost a let down by comparison. Much like the man in *my* chair, haggling down his bill, it was also a bit too rich and greasy for my taste.

An extra long pause was required before cramming down the champagne cheesecake and rhubarb, followed by the cheese plate. We waddled off a few calories on the way home, possibly enough to offset the petit fours that came with the coffee.

Waking up at about 1AM, it occurred to me that the massive ingestion of dairy produce wasn’t going to do our cholesterol levels any favours. It certainly wasn’t good for the bedroom’s air quality either – it smelled like we were sleeping in a methane capsule. Who says romance is dead?

Eat here: but not at my table
Keywords: cheese

Three Ways Restaurant, Brigg Street

19 May

Webster’s defines serendipity as ‘the phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for’. The OED is more precise:

Serendipity: stopping to tie one’s shoelace and finding a Lebanese restaurant.

Until a fortnight ago, The Three Ways Restaurant had never graced my radar. I have thought long and hard about how this could happen, and have concluded that either:

a) the elaborate window-dressing at The Carphone Warehouse has, over the years, so absorbed my attention that I am blind to all else within a fifty-yard radius; or (more likely)
b) my new spectacles conduct high-frequency food-waves directly into my brain’s falafel receptors.

It’s now half-past lunchtime on Saturday, and we have anniversary presents to buy each other. Wooden ones.

A spoon, I’m told, would be inappropriate, and we’ve used up our parking permit quota, thereby killing off my dreams for a Trojan horse. It’s clear that I’m floundering and I need inspirational fuel.

Mrs Wifey also needs fuel, but can afford to go easy on the inspiration because she already knows what she’s going to buy. All I know is that my capacity for abstract thought no longer extends beyond cous cous.

Up above Going Places we claim the window nook overlooking Pret a Manger. It’s hardly a tough bag though – we are, as ever, the last of the lunch crowd, and have the entire place to ourselves.

I have the mixed mezze: chicken kebab, a couple of salady things, the second-best hummus I’ve ever eaten, and, for the first time in living memory, more bread than I can possibly force down my carb-loving cakehole. Mrs Wifey (maker of the first-best hummus I have ever eaten) has the soup, which comes with a wrap the size of a rounders bat.

Great food: eleven quid (plus drinks). Could this be Norwich’s best value lunch?

I could start worrying about how something this excellent could be so cheap, but instead I put it down to karma. Statistically, I must have done something good at some point, surely?

I shop. I succeed. Mrs Wifey shops. Norwich fails her. Whatever it is that she’s after, Norwich doesn’t sell it.

I’m no theologist, but this must be sign that I am a *better* person. Looks like I don’t need to start that Animal Hospital subscription after all.

Eat here: regularly
Keywords: tahini tingle

Belgian Monk, Pottergate

21 April 2007

Spring is here, and with it bluebells, barbecues and the butter mountains of brilliant flesh that no man should ever see. It is a time to absorb every last golden drop of sun, ideally with beer in hand.

But what to do at lunch time? Dining outside is less easy in Norwich than, say, Nice – unless of course you’re happy to snatch a pasty on the steps of Next, and observe the local teenagers be, as they say, alternative (which, as far as I can discern, amounts to little more than girls spitting and boys sharing make-up).

Two minutes’ walk from the increasingly serious gotholick posturing is The Belgian Monk. Here we find a blessedly discreet terrace out back, where, in the absence of shade, one can settle down to an indecent variety of Belgian beers and soak up the UV till exquisitely pink. The beer starts at around Stella strength and increases in liability from there. They’ll also serve it with a straw, for those on a budget.

For those unfamiliar with Belgium’s contribution to cuisine, it broadly comes down to chocolate and moules frites – The Belgian Monk focuses more on the latter, with some thirteen different ways of serving them (twenty-six if you count the snack-sized servings). There may well be a chocolate menu, but I had red mist for meatballs and was disinclined to check.

However, I was under orders to get mussels for Mrs Wifey (she having baggsied the sitting down and holding the table out in the sun job), and so I ordered her moules with salmon and leek.

One seldom has the opportunity to use both ‘medieval’ and ‘sconce’ in the same sentence, but with the chips arriving in such a vessel, it was, linguistically speaking, a dream come true.

Yet it was also grossly disheartening, as the best fries in the world are [arguably] Belgian by birth – or at least cooking technique. Serving a chubby chip with your moules is like buying a box of Leonidas and finding a Double Decker inside. However, Mrs Wifey was happy, and that was the most important thing.
I was also happy: the meatballs were good.

As a monk-free provincial Belgo, it fills a market niche, but the wise money comes during the week for the dubbel deal menu.

Eat here: but don’t make a habit of it. A habit! Ha! I’m here all week!
Keywords: lager lager lager

Steers, Lobster Lane

31 March 2007

Some people can pogo, others can understand vectors. Once, I even read about a bloke who could write different academic papers with each hand while holding an unrelated conversation (less useful than it sounds, apparently). Mrs Wifey – she can sleep.

Sometimes – when she’s really been champing at the bit – I leave her to it. Everyone needs their me time, and besides, it’s good to have hobbies. By midday though, I see that our breakfast-meter has ticked over from fashionably late to positively indecent, with vulgar sloth on the none too distant horizon.

The weekend shopping trip therefore begins somewhat behind schedule, and the list is necessarily stripped down to the bare bones. Yet despite this reduced agenda, our spirit cracks after just ten minutes in Gap and we are in urgent need of soul food.

However, in the absence of rice and peas and Red Rip (Norwich not being a hotbed of West Indian cuisine), we’re ready to compromise for anything within 200 yards.

Now, I’m a man of simple double standards. For example, if I can’t see inside a pub, I’ll not venture in. Pressganging may be less common these days, but business is brisk in wicker man pubs, and we are in Norfolk, after all.

When it comes to eating, however, I ain’t so proud. The door next to Thorns hardware store is open, and all that’s visible is the stairwell and the promise of burger.

Two flights later, we enter a well-windowed expanse that looks onto Pottergate. It’s much larger and lighter than Captain America’s, just around the corner, it has better beer (ie not just watery US lager) and St Gregory’s church makes good scenery.

It also has the best picture of a North Sea drilling platform that I’ve ever seen in a gent’s toilet, *anywhere*. I asked for the skinny: ‘It was like that when we got here.’

The burgers weren’t *bad*, but my heart and head always dip when I can’t have my beef rare. The chilli was less sweet and meaty than at Captain America’s (a good thing) but also had too much tomato paste (a bad thing). As for the chips – they were nice. But they weren’t fries.

Norwich has an abundance of American-style chow houses, and Zaks, for one, does a better burger spread. Maybe we should sacrifice this one and redevelop the oil rig niche.

Eat here: with 2 for 1 offer flyer
Keywords: high up rig chic

Wagamama, Chapelfield Plain

24 March 2007

Getting out of bed on Saturday is already hard enough, but without comprehensive emergency assistance from the fire service, Jack Bauer and, very likely, the AA, my leaving the house with any degree of haste is less likely than Joss Stone scoring a barefoot hattrick in the FA Cup final, for Norwich.

Due to the locally prescribed lunch period (thass jus’ saavage ter ea' arfter 2 o’claark) this significantly reduces lunching options to the faster variety.

I’m not one to dismiss the virtues of the hot sausage, but (heavens!) there’s a time and a place for such vulgarity. I am therefore grateful for the noodle coming to Norwich.

The Wagamama window affords the opportunity to observe the hoodie phenomenon in its natural habitat (‘See how the alpha male flirts with his harem by successively grabbing each by the crotch. One day the younger males will challenge the alpha for his authority, but for now they look on, their whooping and grunting signalling respect and admiration…’)

Between machine-gunned interrogations from our waitress, the semi-circular eyebrows of a nearby customer caused me much distraction. When men shave off eyebrows, (a) it’s done for the craic and (b) they generally belong to other people. As she didn’t look the type for such behaviour, I was left to speculate why she chose this look of perpetual astonishment. Does she choose her daily expression between ablutions and breakfast? (‘Today, Matthew, my brow is balancing dreamy sophistication and ruthless determination. Think Impressionism meets kamikaze pilot…’)

The noodles arrived and spoiled the conjecture. I also ordered pickles and extra chillies, a good idea and entirely pointless, respectively. I’ve no idea what those pickles were, other than that they weren’t gherkins or silverskin onions. I have every idea what the extra chilli was, however. It was a red chilli, cut into tiny pieces. With hindsight, I should have thought this through better.

The stir-fry ginger chicken in the miso soup was delicately charred, and along with everything else, very well received. The chicken chilli men also went down well. In fact, it was still going down as my plate was taken away. Her bowl still quite full, Mrs Wifey signalled displeasure at our being hounded out using her expressive (natural) eyebrows.

She was allowed to finish swallowing before her bowl was also snatched.

Eat here: quickly
Keywords: good chow (noodles) high brow doodles

La Tasca, Tombland

10 March 2007

Buffets, for me, bring to mind an overabundance of sausage rolls and dearth of decent salad. They invariably leave me full of pastry and protein, with a possible baby tomato or two as a nod to the five-a-day vegetable pushing fascists (*Twenty* grapes is one portion? Come off it!) – But I digress.

Mrs wifey doesn’t like buffets. She doesn’t know when she’s eaten enough. We recently found out that this is something to do with the difference between hunger and appetite. As Jeffrey Steingarten describes:

‘hunger is an nagging sensation that triggers constant thoughts of food and
reminds you that your body wants to eat … Appetite is simply the tendency to eat.’

This partly explains how you can be fit to burst with lasagne yet somehow still have space for tiramisu. Or, in the case of tapas, how you (read I) just don’t know when to stop.

With tapas, experience has taught me to exercise restraint. It’s like a buffet with less pastry and more meatballs. And salad. Oh, and you can get it on your plate without having to get out of your chair.

Of course, you’ll not get much on your plate at any one moment, as La Tasca support the tiny plate technique, probably to maximise the other dishes on the table, as it does seem to fill very quickly.

The menu seems a little tamer than the last time we went – possibly it’s a seasonal thing, possibly it has been dumbed down. Either way, there’s no platter of whitebait to gnaw at. Instead we have fresh anchovies. It’s a naïve choice – despite the day’s glorious sun, one swallow does not a summer make. They would have been much better for a July lunch.

We also have the ‘famous’ meatballs, ribs, tortilla and salad. The ribs are tasty, if a bit scanty, but everything else (even the salad) ticks its food group box. The music, however, sucks. Techno-carnival beats do not facilitate digestion or conversation. But neither are they the end of the world.

La Tasca does not offer most exciting, authentic Spanish experience in Norwich, but it’s perfectly serviceable for the money, I’ve never had to book, and (this might be all in the mind) it feels a damn sight warmer than La Torero.

Eat here: For meatballs, brandy and flamenco techno
Keywords: Got your big plate Alan?

The Inn Plaice, Silver Street

3 March 2007

I don’t recall my worst ever Saturday. Sure, there’s been a couple of times when Jose Cuervo’s Friday partying has kicked the following days into touch, but away from the sauce, nothing sticks in mind. That’s not to say that this Saturday was the worst on record, but it was a contender.

A six-day working week sucks. That much is undisputed. But when the first five days have been 12-hour shifts, so that working a mere five hours on Saturday seems blessedly light, you know something’s gone to cock. However, I’ve got it easy. Mrs wifey adds another day on the front of that, tailing it off by finishing a seven-hour Saturday at 2130. And then she’s thinking about making dinner.

A truly modern man would have used his two-hour lead time to prepare some fancy chow to present his better half as she crossed the finish line. Not this man though. My kitchen expertise extends to a full English (no beans), sandwiches, and washing up. I excel at washing up. My dish-washing game is up. My technique is fully academic shaolin temple black belt ninja Tokyo-stomping Godzilla Krypton Factor good. But you can’t eat it.

But you *can* eat chips.

I think this through. (1) She will appreciate not having to cook, but (2) she will be perfectly within her rights to dismiss a Saturday night chip supper as a disappointing, unhealthy, peasant-like manner of capping off a generally dismal day. Even if we eat off crockery.

The addition of champagne, however, changes that equation. Suddenly the whole package is tied together with enough profane decadence to stick two fingers up at the day.

This is partly because champagne is so grossly overpriced that it would be cheaper to wash down the chips with a pint of Bells; but also because the fizzy dryness cuts through the grease so much better than you could reasonably expect.

And what is it about chip butties that makes them hit the spot so well? You don’t put pasta on toast. You don’t put rice in your pitta. But ‘Fries? In a sandwich?!’, as I’m told John Cusack greeted his first chip butty – you’re on to a winner.

Grinning like gravy-sated Bisto kids, we pat our swollen bellies and pass out from exhaustion.

Keywords: decadent trash
Eat here: when you know you shouldn’t but you’re hella gonna

Cafe Rouge, Exchange Street

24 February 2007

It’s a lunchtime dilemma – it’s quarter to two, I’ve got the steak sandwich craving, but the missus fancies soup. Hot Fuzz starts in three quarters of an hour, so while there’s not an overabundance of time to digest said cow, there’s certainly sufficient by any reasonable bistro’s reasonable standard. Café Rouge is just around the corner and by now, one would think, the lunchtime rush will have passed its peak.

Of course, that would assume that the busy peak is due to an excess of customers, rather than efforts on the part of the staff to hold on to their dear clientele until they expire from want. When George Romero makes Lunchtime of the Dead, it will surely be in Café Rouge. Twenty minutes after ordering, our drinks finally arrive. The spring water is served with slice and ice. I fail to see the logic in making fresh water taste like dishwater, but come the revolution, the proprietors of Café Rouge won’t be the only restaurateurs up against the wall for hydrovillainy. Although they’ll probably be last to arrive.

Forty minutes after ordering our food arrives. Yep, that’s soup of the day and a steak sandwich; heaven help anyone who ordered the Dordogne duck confit served with orange liqueur sauce, French beans and dauphinoise potatoes or the braised rack of lamb in a rich red wine sauce served with fresh herb mash and French beans.

To be fair, the onion soup went down well, but it certainly wasn’t an eight quid sandwich. Perhaps one pays for the ambience? With the bill arriving some ten minutes after requesting it, there’s certainly time to gorge on the surroundings.

The longer one sits in Café Rouge, the more the contrived décor begins to grate – the deliberately mismatched lampshades, the faux-rustic doodlings on the walls, and so forth. It’s not so much a *design vision*, as the gallic shrug of a designer broken by a committee that can’t decide between chic metropolitan bistro or rough village café.

Twenty quid might not be an almighty sum to pay for lunch, but if it only buys dishwater and a dog’s dinner, is it really worth it? Cross the road and hit the tapas bar instead.

Keywords: je n’ai pas le temps
Eat here: or die trying

Zaks Waterside Grill and Bar, Barrack Street

10 February 2007

Some hangovers only need paracetamol. Even after the lie-in, this one is going to take litres of coffee, orange juice and water, a couple of hours of self-pity/regret, a nap, prescription painkillers, hair of the dog and lots and lots of salt. I remember the exact whisky when this dawned on me, and then necking it anyway. Sometimes being right really sucks.

Rolling out of bed, I look like I’ve been thrown up after a Singapore-Heathrow flight, sitting next to tag-team bawling babies. I spend the next two hours welling up in front of Spiderman 2, clearly more drained and emotionally fraught than the initial diagnosis suggested.

Hangovers like this not only drive otherwise rational adults to McDonald’s, but also turn that Big Mac into the best burger *ever*. There’s a chemical reason for this, I know, but I don’t pretend to understand it. All I know is that I too need hot minced beef.

The options are thus getting washed, dressed and motivated, or staying in my bedclothes and fixing cat-food on toast.

Zaks is off the beaten track and a ten-minute walk from my house. Like Wimpy, they provide real cutlery. Unlike Wimpy, you can get a beer. It’s a no-brainer, which is fortunate, given my current absence of cerebral activity.

Zaks’ shtick is American memorabilia. The main room is arguably more A17 than Route 66, but the conservatory is nice – pleasantly warm and lined with old tin signs. It looks on to the terrace, which looks on to the river and Cow Tower. Even with today’s pizzling mist, it’s a good look.

Zaks’ burgers are all under a tenner. They are gigantic (the cutlery is indispensable). Mine is rare enough to taste the pink. There are more chips than I can possibly eat, but thanks to vulgar gluttony, I still do pretty well (experience recommends avoiding the wedges). My Corona hits the spot.

The service is friendly, helpful and courteous. Anyone expecting fawning ass-kissing will be disappointed. But then again, they shouldn’t be eating in diners in the first place.

Quibbles are negligible: (a) anaemic salad tomatoes (although this is a national problem, not limited to Zaks); and (b) the conservatory lighting is a bit, well, green, and makes a good pink steak look well done. It doesn’t detract from the flavour, but it does take part of the fun out of devouring raw-looking flesh.

Keywords: meat, chips, cutlery.
Eat here: when you’re a bit peaky.