Blogging Under The Influence

Sorting out my photos recently, I came across a couple I didn't recognise - one of the outside of a Pakistani restaurant and the other of its kitchen. It was then the memories came flooding back of a weekend away in Birmingham watching cricket and drinking beer. OMG - I was blogging whilst under the influence.....

Now Birmingham has some decent dining options including an OK Chinatown but after a day at the cricket, there's only really one option, curry - but where ? We were all a bit worse for wear and none of us really knew Brum but my mate had a brainwave - let's ask a taxi driver.

To this day, I'm surprised our cabbie didn't just drive off as we kept banging on about 'an authentic place', 'not any old crappy curry house', 'doesn't have to be near the city centre' with the clincher of 'where do you go for a curry?'.

We were dropped off at Ladypool Road deep in the 'Balti Triangle' and bless our legend of a cabbie, he gave us options from which we chose Desi Grill Khana (probably cos we saw the magic word 'kebab' on their shopfront). Carrying on our theme of not making any decisions, we asked our waiter to bring a selection of their best dishes.

To start we had a fantastic mixed grill of lamb chops, chicken and mixed kebabs. This was followed by some curries served with naan and rice. Apologies for the scant details and lack of food photos - I think I must have just started eating once the mixed grill arrived and stopped 'drink-blogging'.

But our taxi adventure is not unusual as we had inadvertently gone the way of the Taxi Gourmet - the blog where Layne Mosler hops in a taxi every week and asks the driver to take her to their favourite place to eat, previously in Buenos Aires, now in New York. I'm not sure how well her concept would translate to London - it would be very expensive and you'd soon get fed up of the full English with strong tea (apologies to any foodie cabbies). But it certainly came good for us in Birmingham.

My only regret was that I was a bit too 'tired' to do the food justice but I guess if we were sober we wouldn't have the gone the way of the Taxi Gourmet. So the next time you're in a strange town, be spontaneous and ask the locals where to eat !