This month we visited the Chequers Pub in Yelden. Having seen that they do a curry night every other Thursday it would have been rude not to take the curry club men to see what they had to offer. Let me say before I get into the detail, this was a fantastic experience. First you have a very clean and homely pub, second it's in a lovely village (one I've always wanted to live in!) and last of course the food was excellent.
So, Tony, Bill, Alan B, Brian S, Pastor Ian, Keith, Jim K, Colin M, Ian R, Alan P, Peter, Julian, Dan, Brian G and Colin S made the short journey to Yelden. Some met first and were already finishing their first pint before the others arrived. Soon we were shown into a nice room where we were served poppadoms and chutney. We then had various starters! Then there were 4 different curries, rice and naan bread. This was all offered as a buffet, so most went back for seconds. At this point I'd like to redeem myself from a previous comment by stating that Colin S only had one plate of food, or so he told me and he didn't say how big the plate was either.
The early conversation was centred around emigration and those we know who have and none have regretted it. All say they wished they had done so earlier and can't understand why we stay in Britain, let me offer a reason for this later. Bill told a story about getting his butchers mixed up, that's the high street and a low cost supermarket, not some characters off Eastenders. Apparently he thought one was the other and got a frosty reception. Maybe a bit like someone mistaking Gordon Ramsey for the local fish and chip shop fryer, not that fish and chip shop fryers are .. well you get the picture.
There was also a conversation about refurbished laptops. I can't remember whether someone had bought one, was selling one, buying or doing one. Anyway, it seemed interesting at the time. There was also some chuckling over the fact that some of the women from the church are trying to organise a breakfast club! They have been trying to get in on the curry club for ages, even resorting to wearing disguises. Can you imagine scalextric, computers, technology, cameras, politics etc would be replaced with handbags, shopping, lacework and shoes ... I'm going to be in real trouble for that :-)
Now after we had all eaten it was time to do some scoring. Readers will know that for the last few months we have got quite precise with our scoring. Everyone scores the 5 categories out of 5 and all scores are totalled and divided by the number of attendees. This has lead to some tougher scoring than we saw earlier as a show of hands can get rounded up. We will have to revisit many establishments to re-score them :-)
OK, so how did the Chequers Pub rate: Quality was 4.6, Quantity was 4.9 (don't know who did not give 5 here, but they need to consider their in-take!), Price, at a fixed very reasonable price it had to be 5.0 from everyone. Staff received 4.0, perhaps a bit unfair here as it was a buffet, you have little experience or interaction with the staff. I can say that the lovely ladies that took our booking at sorted out the bill were a 5.0 in my book. Finally, ambiance got 3.96, again I'm not sure why, the pub is well decorated, the atmosphere was good. But hey, this is why we score this individually and it's hard to appeal to everyones taste and with 17 people attending, it was one of our biggest attendance figures. So it all added up to 22.4 out of 25!! The Chequers will be pleased to know that this is officially the highest score we have ever given, even with the older scoring system. As usual the opinions stated here are personal and as a result of the experience we had on the evening we visited.
Remember that reason for not emigrating I mentioned earlier ... do you really want freezing cold lager and barbecue every night, when you can go to places like the Chequers Pub?
A very successful visit and right now in poll position for our Christmas return to the best of the year venue. Until next time ...