A New Ear.

My title was meant to start as "A New Era" but I mistyped it and then decided I quite liked the mistake. Anyway...

Over a variety of banal and strange e mail arguments, spanning the past two days, we have finally "agreed" on a set of criteria for the TCC's evaluation of a curry house. You'd think it would be easy. You'd think that you'd all sit down and go "Right, food. That's the important bit...food and atmosphere and a reasonable price". Then you might all nod your heads in cyber space and that would be that.

If only. No wonder the Middle East question still rages when a few friendly people can disagree, quite so impressively, on what makes a good curry house.

The e mail thread entitled "So it begins" spanned over 50 e mails and included a myriad of insane discussions about the relative merits of a curry house's complimentary poppadoms or the possible ghee content of a side dish. Who would have thought this could be so complex? The highlight for me was this gem on whether a curry house should be penalised for allowing you to bring your own booze in or not. Some thought BYOB was a bonus, some said it placed too much emphasis on the alcohol, some said it could punish certain religions!

This was an actual response in our e mail arguments about whether BYOB should improve a curry house's score on value for money. Please bear in mind that we are all pretty simple and just want to eat curry and drink some booze.

"Ah, but if you're using this on the price scale, then the overall value for money will be effected. It gives an unfair advantage to BYOB on this scale. We will need to take this in to consideration when working on the price ratings. Maybe some kind of factorisation to the bill to standardise the price depended in licensed status."

I still don't think this makes any sense or contains any worthy points but it impressed me nonetheless. The argument raged until one member was reduced to recounting memories of a dark episode in Goa airport. Stood by the baggage carousel, having disembarked off the aptly named Spice Jet from Mumbai, he was caught unawares by the death rattle of the previous day's curry. Dark times. Should any after effect be included in the scale? This could go on forever...

We settled on this. When I say settled, I mean the argument briefly stopped and I am praying that's because we agreed. These are the categories we decided on. You may not concur. You may laugh heartily and scream "BUFFOONS!" at your monitor but I don't care. I am weakened. I just want to start eating spiced meat.

Big Dunc, a vibrant spokesperson in this whole farce, waded in with this e mail when I was on the edge of sanity. I think this captures the concepts we discussed pretty well.

A number of these can indeed be combined into an overall category. I think it's worth discussing each point when coming to an overall score for something.
My vote would therefore be for:

Decor, Cleanliness and Clientele (includes ambience, music, general "buzz" of the place, and any potential celeb customers, amount of cockroaches, etc) - score out of 10

Value for Money (portion sizes, plus use the set dish idea, but also also taking into account overall quality and experience: is it worth the price?) - score out of 10

Service (Staff friendliness, banter, knowledge of dishes, speed of delivery, did they get the order right, did they try and add anything to the bill, did they clone your credit card afterwards?) - score out of 10

Curry (Variety of dishes, spices, Ghee effect, etc) - score out of 10

Other dishes (Starters, side dishes, sundries and drinks) - score out of 10

Overall score out of 50.

Additional points for formal review afterwards include proximity of nearest boozer for after curry drinking session, and any post curry effects.

Yes this may not cover it all. Perhaps you may disagree and all opinions are considered if you do (the TCC is dynamic and organic - it will adapt) but for now I'm going with this. One, because I'm worn out by the madness of curry ratings and, more importantly - two, because we're going to Lahore tonight. The restaurant not the place. It's a bit of a scam to start with one of the better renowned places but it's just how it worked out.

We're meeting in the Selkirk for booze and to argue again, no doubt, and then we're gonna stroll over. No doubt it'll be full and we'll end up eating a kebab in a side alley but whatever happens the last two days has been interesting.

The TCC is ready to roll. We hope to include a set menu and check the price of it in each eatery so I will put that down on my review as well. Will this work? Will we achieve anything? Will anyone make it to the curry house or will we get leathered and end up brawling down Garratt's Terrace, using wheelie bins as weapons?

Unknown. Tune in to find out, I guess.

In the words of Louis Mountbatten to Mahatma Gandhi: "I just think a jalfrezi tastes better with a beer than, say, an orange juice! And what the fuck is a lassi?"

Wish us luck.

Berry7.