House of Spice

Sector: Somewhere in Oxford Stardate: Wednesday 5 June 2002 Event: First escape from the Reading Black Hole Go back to Naan Trek home page

The first Naan Trek review from outside the Berkshire Quadrant occured rather by accident. The original mission objective was for a night out in Oxford including touchdown in a Mexican restaurant. We communicated ahead to book a table, only to find when we arrived that it had somehow been transformed into an Indian in the year since anyone had been there, or else we had inadvertently slipped into a parallel universe containing slightly more curry houses. Not willing to squander an opportunity we whipped out our throbbing tricorders and your dedicated reporter set about making microscopic notes on the back of a "Flackwell Heath Cricket Club" raffle ticket.

Decor: A mixture of cream walls and exposed brickwork.
Music: Cool Miles Davis at first, followed by Indian music.

• The atmosphere was sullied a bit by an Irritating American at the next table (who incidentally was a dead ringer for Bill Gates) droning on about his Walmart shares or some such thing.
• Hand drier in men's loo didn't work.

Time to get served: Around 45 minutes.

• Abrupt service. The waiter dumped the rice on Richard's plate in a very dismissive manner. Miserable git.

Popadums and chutneys: Normal popadums, four dips including lime pickle; fairly ordinary.
Lime pickle: "Adequate but not exciting" (Allan).
Onion bagees (£2.25): Four, but very small, although the taste was good.

Sag Prawn (£5.50): "Delectable" (Christopoulos).
Lamb Patia (£6.25): "Mmm, fruity! Nearly as good as the one I had in Exeter (but I was more p*ssed then)." (Ellison).
Fish Curry (£7.50): A whole fish in sauce "Subtle flavour makes up for the expression of excruciating pain on the fish's face" (Allan).
King Prawn Bhuna: "Very good, Gulab standard" (Holden).
Chicken Bombay (£4.95): "Pukka!" (Neale).
Boul Dansak (£7.25): Bangladeshi fish "delicious" (Hogan).

• Sweet Pumpkin: "Juicy, to die for!" (Ellison).
• Banoffee Torte: "Excellent, thumbs up, top banana, etc." (Christopoulos).
• Aroma Venus: chocolate ice cream on coconut ice cream "very nice" (Hogan).

Key:

Yes

No

Too drunk to remember

• Set meals available; buffet option on Sundays only.
• Beers: Cobra, Kingfisher and Bangla were all on sale. The enticingly named "Karma Sutra" was off tonight unfortunately.
• Irish coffee "above average" (Allan), Cointreau coffee also nice.
• Hot towels: real flannel, but smelt of midge spray: "a bit gammy" (Ellison).