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
