Somebody sent me a Reddit thread I’m featured in. I’ve never read a Reddit thread before, mostly because at face value they seem like a petri dish for half-digested opinions go to be reproduced by faceless accounts. It’s a chorus of people convinced they’re thinking, when in fact they’re merely regurgitating whatever opinion last brushed past their retinas. Each comment arrives with the swagger of revelation and the intellectual weight of a fortune cookie. Sarcasm substitutes for wit, certainty replaces knowledge, and the upvote button serves as a pacifier for the terminally mediocre. If curiosity ever lived here, it was downvoted to death sometime around the third comment. Anyway, they were mostly nice about me, save for the half-truth that I’m controversial, the full truth that I’m pally with a number of chefs, and the wish-it-was-truth that I’m paid by The Plough. One person preferred whatshername because thingit mentions if the venues are dog friendly, whilst another said that actually none of us bloggers ever really get out into the suburbs to truly experience ethnic areas.
I have umbrage with the last bit. Out of all the thread, that’s the bit that bothered me most. I go where it interests me, whether that’s nice areas or places that Tory MP’s would call lawless, or Italy for a three star lunch with someone I never truly liked. I happen to think it’s all a bit white saviour to wander into places and declare it a hidden gem just because it’s hidden to white people, and in truth it’s an easy cop out to say that somewhere is excellent knowing full well that others won’t make the journey because of where it is. I saw the Bhaizans Grill viral posts and I enjoyed the madcap antics of the sunglasses wearing chef saying ‘banging banging fire’ followed by a mumbled address, way more than I liked some bloke scoring it a 9.5, not because someone I know suggested that the latter “sprinkles in duffs for cash”, but because the former is hilarious in a way that it could be a sitcom. Get that bloke a TV show. Maybe, purely, if only to keep him away from cooking the sheekh kebab, but get that bloke a show.
I asked the wife if she wanted to go. She said no (she also said she’d divorce me if I said “banging banging fire” once more), so I stuck it on Instagram for a dance partner. Step forward Big G, a hunk of rare meat straight from Marseille who runs half marathons in sandals and benches tree trunks for fun. He thought the whole experience of going to Lozells for dinner was brilliant fun, taking pictures and sitting in the kind of place that a programmer from the south of France never really gets to. The interiors are basic, understated, with brown leather sofas, cleanish tables, and faux-brick wallpaper. I doubt it’s dog friendly. We ordered the tawa grill for two, not the viral green fish and chips, not the NHS doner, but the tawa grill. Big G has protein to eat. I think the G stands for ‘gainz’.
The food is okay, passable mostly, in that kind of nondescript, could have come from most places kind of way. Lamb chops that have the backnote of smoke and a lengthy, prolonged chew, and chicken tikka that is so anonymous it has its own reddit account. Semi decent chicken wings with truly awful kebabs that are gristle padded-out with a little lamb. G likes the dog-food-esque treat of lamb and chicken doner meats chopped and stirred through some hot sauce and veg, and in truth I quite like it piled high on the brittle naan breads. Tell nobody. There’s a pile of cheap chips and a curry of sorts that’s really nothing of the sort. £35 for two including a weird salad and a bottle of the Mango Ice, a Trump initiative for making Mango’s Great Again that involves deporting all other fruit. I jest. It’s the sweetest drink I’ve ever tried.
And for all this average food I can’t hate it. The staff are kind and engaging and clearly still coming to terms with the weird and short lived effects of going viral. The place was busy when we left with all tables full. Not with knobheads like me and G judging everything with our phones in our hands, but with a thriving local community eating in a place that they think does half-decent food at a half-decent price. I think I prefer that world a lot more than mine.
5/10
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