Salaam Namaste, Bloomsbury

Continuing a theme for this year, Meal Club this month was something of a hasty last-minute affair. Less than a week before the scheduled date a few suggestions were thrown out and the date was changed to the Friday (which surprisingly found quite a few of us social butterflies free). We were:

Becca
Laura
Mamps
Pete
Sam
Vicki
Will

A few of us met beforehand at a local pub staffed entirely by incompetents dressed like prostitutes. I was forced by Becca to down my pint lest Manpreet, who was waiting for us in the restaurant, should get angry at us. I took my pint with me and drank it on the way, student-style to be greeted by a secret text from Mamps saying that the indian waiters had been hassling her since she arrived.

Salaam Namaste is a self-proclaimed "new sensation in Indian dining". Check out their website which does well to slap a picture of a pissed-up Boris Johnson on the front page. Superficially it looks like a pretty standard Indian restaurant with perhaps a little more thought than usual put into the decor. The menu, to be fair is something special. The choice was huge and full of stuff that sounded great. Not your usual bhuna/korma/madras/vindaloo dishes either. Techically they do serve that but it barely registers with you when compared against the speciality regional dishes on offer.

Sam arrived a little late but that's forgiveable since she's managed to have a baby in between successive Meal Clubs but still attend them both. Good darts!

Ironically, one of the few things I can remember from the night (no note taking again from me!) was having a brain spasm where my memory went haywire. Maybe I've been watching too much Lost but I'm adamant there was some kind of time dilation thing going on. Seriously this is one of the weirdest things to happen to me and even as I write this I'm getting confused as to what I thought had happened vs what everyone else said had happened. I think this is correct:

After we'd finished the main course (mine being a meat dish served on a rectangular plate), I made some kind of comment about it which led everyone else to accuse me of being a mentaller because only the starters have been served. The problem is I was 100% certain that we'd had two courses by this point. The fact that the main courses then arrived meant I was clearly wrong but something weird was definitely going on in my brain.

I should point out that by this point I'd had two pints of beer (one near work, one near the restaurant) and while I'd been forced to drink both of them much more quickly than I normally would, I don't think this could have been the cause. Maybe I'd been abducted by aliens or something.

Anyway, back to the restaurant. I had ginger lamb chops which were great and that's pretty much all I can remember about the food. Sorry guys. Poor blogging I know. I'll take notes next time, promise!!

Also I have a vague memory of Mamps initiating more "what would you do for £1m" conversations.

by the way, until further notice, Meal Clubs are definitely on the last Thursday of every month.