A bit of a do

We had our team Christmas “do” yesterday. Half the people I work with are off today. Of the remaining half, some of us feel somewhat delicate, but since I did most of my serious drinking after leaving the group to hit a Leeds hostelry with D, my dignity (in the office, at least) remains intact.

And so, The Spice Quarter. For £9.95 a head for all you can eat, I shouldn’t really complain. After all, the food was just there to provide lining for the stomach. But I’m going to (complain) because this is my blog and I can if I want to.

Firstly, I am always going to be suspicious of somewhere that purports to do Indian, Thai, Chinese and Italian cuisine. It’s like those dodgy takeaways you see that do curry, pizza and chicken and chips. You just know that none of those are going to be done in any way competently. So I did not have high hopes. And, to be strictly fair, none of the food that I tried at The Spice Quarter was actually inedible. It just all tasted a bit….nothingy. Bland. The curries had no heat and very little taste, plus you had to stand for a good few minutes at the buffet fishing around for bits of meat in the oceans of neon coloured sauce. The pizza looked and tasted like it had been taken from a supermarket freezer – thick, doughy base and a load of pale, sloppy cheese that tasted…pale and sloppy. I couldn’t be bothered to even try any of the desserts – they all appeared to be school dinner rejects with pallid, puckered skins forming beneath the lights. I’ve just remembered that I did quite like a tandoori chicken wing. But that’s about it.

There’s another one of these lurking in Cardiff apparently – but I can only assume, since it has won an award for being the best Indian restaurant in Wales, it is a) better or b) Welsh people don’t like good curry.

The Spice Quarter

Electric Press Building
Great George Street
Leeds
LS2 3AD