We were seated in the small but clean restaurant and spaced out nicely. We waited until a few of the guys turned up and then we were all in and ready. It should be said, as some of the members didn't realise, the Spicery does not sell alcohol. You are of course welcome to pop to the local shop, buy your own and take it in. Our drinks orders (cokes, juice, tap water and Lassi) were taken. Now the deal is like this, you pay one price and then you can order as many items as you can eat. Sounds fair to us curry eaters. However, this is not a buffet with everything cooked and ready to troff. We ordered starters and then got on with talking. Some of the drinks were late arriving, but no big issue.
Now they say, or someone said anyway, that you should never discuss religion or politics. Well, as many of us had been down to vote for numerous things in the day, the obvious discussion ensued. Now Swiss Pete, not being English on account that he is Swiss, which is why we call him Swiss Pete and not because he has a passion for Swiss Rolls, though he may have and I just don't know. Where was I, oh yes, Swiss Pete had strong opinions on the old AV (to me that's Anti-Virus, but I gather it stood for alternative vote) which differed from those around him. So a reasonable discussion was had. So you either vote for a process that enables minority groups to have an impact on the end result, that will cost the tax payer a lot of money and is generally not understood by the populous or you vote the right way. There, sorted. Then of course we have the odd discussion about religion. But neither of these discussions had the best impact. It was sport that took the headline on one table. It came to light that Tony and Colin support what one could say are strong rivals football teams. Tony, being born and brought up around Chelsea, supports the club of his childhood. Colin, being touched by the Munich air disaster supports Manchester United. Both reasonable reasons for supporting a specific football club. Now it would be too easy and unfair of me to abuse my editorial control of this blog to sound off about one of the teams. So I won't. Instead I'll mention the fact that we all agreed that football is being spoilt by what is maybe the majority of supporters now. I'm not just talking about the mindless thugs that go just to cause trouble. I'm including the so called parents that encourage or allow their kids to use abusive language and signs while sitting in the family seats. Why can't supporters of opposing clubs just sit next to each other and enjoy the game? I know the players on the pitch are using every tactic to cheat by rolling around on the floor as though they have been stabbed, or tripping over their own feet and claiming it was the 4 and half feet long leg of the defended that caught them. But at the end of the day, they all do it, they all get away with some stuff and all get caught with others. So it's a level playing field as it were. Lets just watch the game, get annoyed with the players, enjoy the players, get annoyed with the ref when he plays 16 mins added time when there was one small stoppage - or is that just at Man U games when Man U are losing? Oops I'm sorry. Yes Chelsea get their fair share with the odd goal or two that appear not to cross the line. Anyway enough rambling, so what was the food like at the Spicery?
Well, the quality of the food was excellent and reflected in the high score of 4.6 out of 5! However, as anyone knows quality food takes time to prepare and this means waiting. Now, those that know the curry club members know that they don't like a long wait. One of the things at the Spicery that was obvious was that the guys were waiting for us to finish before considering whether we wanted anything else to try. This meant that after a reasonable wait for the starters, we also waited a considerable to for the main course. Then when we finished it, we sort of thought, do we want to wait another long time to try something different. Mohamed did come and ask us, after we had finished whether we wanted to try something else, and as we had paid for a kind of buffet, we ordered another sharing dish. Again the quality was excellent.
The general feeling was that instead of taking individual orders from everyone, we should have ordered a few dishes and then once they had come out and been half eaten, ordered some other dishes. This way there would have been a steady stream of different dishes to try. Something to think about. I do have to say that the variety of dishes on offer is fantastic, with ... wait for it, curry pizza's!! We must go and get one from the takeaway menu that they have.
So to the scoring, the quality and quantity got good scores. The staff ( which includes speed of service) didn't do so well. But that's the price you pay for quality. Ambience got a reasonable score as did price. The final score was 21.3, which puts the Spicery mid table. A good effort for this new establishment. I'm sure that if the items mentioned are taken on board, the score will go up and who knows there is a very real chance of topping the leader board some time.
Before I end, we must just mention 2 specific curry club members who were not with us due to illness. We hope they both return to full health to enjoy another curry with us.
As usual the opinions expressed here are entirely personal and represent 13 blokes views on the night. So until next month, curry on with out us.