The Pryordurkins

Posts Tagged ‘chinese’

Having worked very late last night I had a great lie in this morning.  With us spending the weekend in London, the only thing I needed to do was check out of one hotel and check into the other.  I arrived at the Crowne Plaza on Buckingham Gate around 2pm and after a spot of coffee in the lounge was shown to our room by Philippe. (nice warm smile).  I was very pleased to discover we had been upgraded to a suite and with the bags unpacked, a warm bath ahead and a soft fluffy bathrobe to lie around in, the only thing missing is Paul who gets into London around 6pm.  I’ll just have to take in a movie and perhaps crack open a bottle of wine to unwind with.  The reason we are spending the weekend in London is that we are off to see Monkey:Journey to the West at a specially built theatre next door to the O2 arena.  We’d followed a documentary about the making of this new Chinese Opera written by Damon Albarn and just have to see.  We’ll post a review after the event.

Dusty had promised to bake a cake for someone leaving work tomorrow, so we popped into Tesco at Clifton Moor at around 10.30pm today.   The place was fairly quiet, but wandering around the aisles were an eclectic mix of individuals.  One guy seemed to be following another guy from a distance up and down each aisle, carrying a small basket with ready made meals for one and some cat food.  The night shift was busy unpacking boxes and re-filling shelves.  One guy really didn’t look happy to be there.  A group a chinese people giggled their way round the fruit and veg section and hovering near the wine and beers were a couple of young women who would not have looked out of place on crimewatch.

Humanity in all its glory was evident at the tills.  One women pushed in front of a guy who was already unpacking his trolley onto the belt.  Another women was trying to push cash into those self service machines with little luck and the staff were calling over the tannoy for additional checkout operators as a queue of generally grumpy, odd, skinny, ashen faced, tired looking people started to build.  Of course they never did come and even the manager was getting irate by this point.

As I stood watching all this going on, I could not help but laugh at how weird and wonderful people can be.

My work colleagues were off for a curry. So feeling sorry for little ‘ol me, who had another thankless evening alone lined up, whilst Mavis was away (again), they invited me along. By the time the evening came around a curry wasn’t in favour so we visited Thida Thai instead.

Being sandwiched between a large Turkish restaurant (which is always empty) and a Chinese buffet, eat all that you can for nothing, then I wasn’t excepting good things, being a connoisseur of Thai food (of course). Well what a surprise! No plastic menus, no paper napkins (here we had large starched lined napkins) and a clean floor, albeit wooden. The décor was tasteful and Thai in style. The service efficient (for the most part) and the staff pleasant. The food was great, tasty and well presented. The buffet starters were a bit pricey for the quantities but you couldn’t complain about the mains. I opted for the chicken green curry, which to my surprise contained less veg than other establishments and was just how it should be with just chicken and Thai aubergines.

More atmospheric than Sangthai (Eskrick) and better food that Siam House (Goodramgate).

Score:4 Stars. Visited February 08.

Tel. 01904 625 855

Tuesday – Saturday 12.00pm-2.30pm Monday – Saturday 6.00pm – 10.30pm

Sunday Closed

While visiting Dusty’s parents we decided to have lunch at The Crown of Crucis, near Cirencester. The car park was empty as we pulled up at around 1 o’clock on Saturday the 3rd November. We had booked ourselves a table in the restaurant thinking it would be the best part of the hotel to eat in. We’ll come to why this was a silly assumption later. We were shown to our table having walked past quite a tempting display of deserts set out on a nicely laid but uncovered table. We ordered some drinks and sat down to study the restaurant menu and very comprehensive plastic bar menu. Part way through studying, we also discovered a dish of the day menu on the table alongside the paper napkins.

The bar menu was something else. Indian, Chinese, Italian, English and Mexican dishes were all on offer. The restaurant menu was mainly fish. We think they need to take some advice from Gordon Ramsay on simplifying. Anyway, Dusty set off to the Bar to place our order (even though we were in the restaurant!) and was barked at by the owner who could only be described as frightening. We started to see why the place was so quiet. Anyway the food was ordered and Dusty regained his calm composure and we waited. It was only at this point that we realised the restaurant was actually the poor relation compared to the rest of the place. The bar area was actually quite nice. It was cosy, had a great fireplace and looked liked some thought had been put into its design. The restaurant however was plain, soulless and cold.

The food arrived at our ‘now fixed’ wobbly table and we tucked into, Gammon, Egg & Chips (for me), Lamb Kaftas (for Dusty), Chicken Tandoori (for Walter) and Ham, Pineapple & Chips (for Mavis). The food was OK and scored between 2 and 3 on the rating scale for the individual meals.

It was time for desert and we set of to look at the tempting array set out, as mentioned earlier on the tables as you enter the restaurant. Two staff stood behind waiting to take my order and the matronly owner hovered barking orders at her staff to ‘hurry up’. As I arrived, she was scolding her staff for having served ‘too large a portion’ of Strawberry Gateau to Mavis who had gone up before. They looked nervous as I approached. Having quietly chosen, the owner barked again, telling her poor staff how to serve my desert. Even I was starting to feel scared by this point as was pleased to get back to the safety of my table. The deserts were quite nice but by this point, the staff were under orders now to set the restaurant tables for the next guests. Loudly shouting orders, we knew our time was up and we needed to leave.

An interesting visit all in all, if only to be scared a little by the overbearing owner. Even the bloke serving behind the bar rolled his eyes a few times as his boss/wife strode around giving instructions.

Give it a go if you fancy a meal with a difference and let us know what you think.

Score: 2 Stars. Visited November 2007.

Tel: +44(0)1285 851806