The good the bad and the ugly

Restaurants that is.... Eating houses, and takeaways. Sometimes known among my friends as ‘throw aways’.

That’s the sort of place I found over the weekend. A Chinese throwaway. Now I’ve been to a few bad restaurants in my time but this place really did take the biscuit. Fortunately I was on my own. If I am with my girlfriend Liz, I try to be a little more selective. You know, somewhere that has slightly more class than Special Chow Mien. I even try to reach higher than the establishment which offers green red or yellow Thai curry.

Lets face it, most takeaways have expanded along this avenue by now, not that it makes much difference because Liz doesn’t like curry anyway, so we usually like to seek out somewhere that offers a little variety and eloquence, like the popular fusion restaurants which have sprung up over recent years, maybe something that offers a Japanese French connection so as to speak. (Udon noodles and frogs legs anybody?).

So it was late in the evening and Paul Simon was singing to me through the car radio when I realised that I hadn’t eaten all day and the situation needed to be remedied. The only option was to find a late takeaway, and I remembered a place near to where I lived, The Dragon Inn. Hadn’t been there for about three years so I didn’t know what to expect. I pulled up on the opposite side of the street. Outside there was a new jazzy neon sign which proclaimed that I had arrived at The Famous Cock or something equally obscure.

Obviously a change of ownership since my last visit. From the car window I noticed that the interior was devoid of patrons, A bad sign? Maybe that was because of the lateness of the hour. It was just gone half past midnight, so not really late at all by today’s standards. Inside everything looked seedy, it was one of those times when you wish you had had a better idea than to walk through the door, but it was too late. I scoured the menu half looking for inspiration, half trying to work out how to escape as the order taker, hunched over the counter, fixed me with a stony gaze reminiscent of Nostradamus scrying into a cauldron of water.

I went for the chicken curry, with plain rice. You can’t go wrong with that can you? Er yes you can.

Here’s where things got really interesting. I opened the food containers in my kitchen and noticed : Rice: one lump or two? On careful examination it was just one. It looked like a snowball, smooth with barely a grain in sight. Curry: not much different to the rice in consistency, in that once I had extricated it onto the dinner plate it continued to assume the shape of the container in which it had arrived, and I had to re-sculpt its blancmange like consistency.

Now you could probably forgive the appearance of this excuse for food, Friday nights being what they are, but appearance isn’t everything, so what about the taste. Nothing. I mean, it didn’t taste of anything, not even salt. I have in the past had curry which resembled gravy in taste and appearance but this was just nothing at all. I guess the normal thing to do would be to complain. But after a long tiring day out you just don’t. maybe we should start a blog to name and shame the worst eateries and praise the best, or even get stuck into the healthy Chinese option, like this one:

500+ Healthy Chinese Recipes