So this month we visited an Indian eating establishment that's been around for 30 years. Quite impressive when you consider the comings and goings of Indian restaurants in town. Keith, Tony, Bill, both Colins, Pastor Ian, Brian G and Brian B, Dan and Ian made the short trip to Irthlingborough to the Eastern Spice. On Thursday you can get a starter, main course, side order, nan or rice and coffee for a very reasonable fixed price.
After ordering our drinks we had a small treat by way of an appetiser - chilli chocolate! On a recent trip to Berlin, Tony spotted the spiced up chocolate and thought it would be rude not to bring a bar back. Chocolate eaten we got down to some intellectual conversation. We started with some discussion about eating rattlesnakes, apparently they slip down easily especially if curried. Then I thought we had entered the twighlight zone as Brian started to tell us how he is having a Hillman Imp refurbished. For the younger readers a Hillman Imp was/is a funny looking little motor car. Why anyone would want to spend money on putting one back together, none of us could fathom. Anyway, we soon got around to talking about PSP games and other sensible stuff, until .....
Bill started telling us about his time during the war. Well I'm not sure which war he was in, er ... actually I'm not sure if he was in the war. It started with a story about looking at a collection of medals and moved to a collection of mouth organs. I didn't really understand what part the mouth organs took in the war, maybe they were a secret weapon. Anyway, once someone mentioned the war, that was it there were stories coming thick and fast. I felt like I was in a scene from only falls and horses with uncle Albert.
Thankfully sanity returned and we had a long debate about the price of vending machine coffee. Colin was particularly outraged by the hike in price of a number 24 (white coffee, with milk and extra sugar, whipped), its now 4 pence a cup! How many coffees do these guys consume in a day? Colin's outrage was fuelled by the fact that earlier the vending machine engineer had left the machine on freewheel .. that's free coffee to you and I. Somewhere in this conversation was an egg-man, don't ask.
The food arrived in good time, with nothing missing. Pastor Ian, for those who haven't seen Ian is a 6ft 2in hairy beast and weighs around 18 stone, chose a large banquet by himself and was still eating as we started to put our coats on. A variety of different dishes were chosen and all agreed they were very good.
We finished off the meal with a small managers treat (given before we mentioned our scoring!). We all agreed that unlike some places that reduce the portion size when they provide banquets, the Eastern Spice served up a full man sized meal. We had to give 5 for quantity and 5 for price, add in 4 for quality, staff and ambience and a very good score of 22 out of 25 was awarded. As usual, I must point out that the opinions stated and used to judge and score are entirely personal. The staff were very pleased with their score and were keen to understand how they faired against other establishments. We explained that our scoring was a recent bit of fun and that we now intend to revisit many restaurants, next stop Rushden high Street!!
By the way, I wasn't strictly telling the truth about Pastor Ian, you'll have to come to the Mission Church to see the man that regularly puts away a large curry!