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.

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.

The Copper Kettle, 29th July, 2007

The Copper Kettle

Lower Goat Ln

Norwich

NR2 1EL

01603 626870

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It's easy to miss Lower Goat Lane, hidden as it is, behind the flourescent fanfare of the facades of the Tesco Metro which lies in front of it. It is, however, an intruiging little street with all manner of small indepdent shops selling or offering various services. The Copper Kettle is hard to find unless you know you're looking for it. Aside from being located some way off the beaten track, it just seemed to blend in to its surroundings like a well kept secret. The interior was strange. Gloomy, dark and slightly dingy, adorned with various copper kettles, and idea which wasn't as clever an idea as the person who conceived it probably thought it was. To add to the confusion the tables were clad with brightly covered, laminate table clothes depicting fruit and breakfasts which didn't seemed a token and inadequate measure to counter the miserable atmosphere. Personally I might have invested the kettle money in to something more urgently required like, say, windows perhaps. Out of the darkness a large woman moved ungracefully towards us, looking like what I can only describe as a Gothically dressed Aunt Bessie. She appeared about as cheery as you might expect someone dressed almost entirely in black, dwelling in equally sombre surroundings to be. We sit. 'What do you want?' She asks, giving us precious little time to purvey the large, leather bound menus that are obscuring our view of each other. I don't know, a welcoming smile? A loud, cheery, booming laugh? With this apparently off the menu, I settled for some breakfast. The food didn't come at the same time, which is always a little irritating and makes the place seem a little amateurish. There are few things more annoying, in a breakfasting context at least, than either having to eat with the rest of your hungry party watching you, or being part of the hungry party watching someone else.

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However, the biggest occurance of note came at the end of the meal when we asked to pay for our food. What followed was a ridiculous disagreement over orange juice. A member of our party ordered a small glass, but was served a big one. Frankly, he wasn't to know that, and it was never made clear that it was a big glass when it arrived. He was then charged for the big glass, and when he noted that he had ordered a small one, Bessie concluded that whilst that might be true, since he had drunk was in the midst of digesting a large glass he would have to pay for one. Frankly, a ludicrously stupid way to treat customers. The place already looked like a gathering of picnic tables in the midst of deepest Mordor as it was, service with a smile was the only thing capable of salvaging it. Surly, morose restuarant oweners who endeavour to make you feel that they are doing you a favour by serving you aside, the food was fairly average and quite overpriced. The leather bound compendium of breakfast options to choice from was also a little excessive, but neither of those issues did as much to ruin the experience as a whole more than the uncomfortalble uneasiness of sitting there, and the woeful customer service.

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. 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


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.

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.

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.

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.