Ratings: 3/10
Telephone: 01603 766670
Address: 21 Tombland, Norwich
Open: Mon-Sat, lunch, noon-2pm; dinner, 6.30-10pm
Price: Lunch, two-course set lunch, £14; three for 18
No wheelchair access.
Encountering the spectre of a John Cleese comic creation is an occupational hazard of this job, but to be reminded of two of them on the same day is to find the Cleesian pudding overegged. I can be definitive on the point, thanks to a drive to East Anglia (where the spirit of Fawlty awaited us) of such soul-crushing, crescendoing horror that it was impossible not to recall the tortured headmaster in Clockwise who speaks that immortal line, "It's not the despair... it's the hope I can't cope with."
Like that headmaster, my cousin Nick and I were en route to Norwich, not to address a conference, but to meet friends for lunch at Tatler's, a naffly named restaurant adjoining the exquisite cathedral. I won't bore you with a detailed account of the trip. Suffice it to say, a solitary missed turning in west London induced a sequence of navigational blunders that combined to put 187 miles on the clock for a journey listed by the AA at 106. Add torrential rain on the single-lane monstrosity that is the only major road into Norwich, and we had to ring Tatler's thrice to put back the booking.
The first two calls offered no hint of the Fawltian scene to follow, but the third did. "We do stop serving at two o'clock," it was primly explained.
"Yes, but we've been driving for four hours and we're almost there."
"Well, we do stop..."
The ensuing demented dash concluded with the four of us panting through the door at 2.01pm to find an empty and apparently unloved central room of three, its walls painted duck-egg green and bedecked with drab pictures of the Norfolk coastline, presided over by a peremptory young woman, possibly German or Scandinavian. "The chef," she said, ushering us to a table, "must leave at 2.20pm. He has an appointment."
Tempting as it was to inquire if he claimed to have a karate class, like the Fawlty chef Terry who deserted his post when a bolshy American turned up, it was more so to indulge in witless sledgehammer sarcasm. "We're most dreadfully sorry," I said. "I just hope we're not putting him out when he's so busy?"
"No, it's OK. But he must go in 15 minutes."
On reflection, maybe it was a mistake to expect vaguely modern standards of service in a city that, as our friends said, has more medieval churches than any in Europe, and somehow lunch was made jollier by the speed at which it was eaten.
Slightly against the run of play, for a man in a tearing hurry the chef did an adequate job, with a set menu full of those familiar, slightly passé eclectic twists (bit of Thai, bit of Med, touch of north Africa, and so on). In fact, he might have shaved a few minutes off the cooking time for my Thai crispy beef salad, the meat being slightly dried out, but the cucumber, mint and chilli dressing was good and authentic. Grilled haloumi with a salad of carrot, watercress and chicory was correctly salty and had the perfect texture (luckily so, since the cheese has no taste), and a passable Caesar salad came with excellent chorizo. It seemed that every salad in the world had gathered here, by a peculiarly cute irony, except one. Perhaps they were all out of Waldorfs?
There was not, you won't be amazed to learn, a tremendous gap between the removal of the starter plates and the arrival of the main courses. My chicken was well cooked but flavourless, despite the advertised lemon marinade, so needed the dollop of crème fraîche it came with, while confit shoulder of lamb was also mediocre and drowned in gravy. However, grilled plaice was "lovely and fresh", and swimming merrily in a buttery, shrimpy sauce, and escalope of salmon was "succulent and delicious, although they've been a bit mean with the samphire".
"If you're going to have puddings," said the waitress, "the chef is about to leave, so you'll have to be quick." Quick we certainly were, bolting down four prettily presented puds, of which the highlights were a glorious, cinnamony cherry bakewell tart and a terrific baked white chocolate and banana cheesecake.
And that was that. I contemplated a purely satirical request for coffee, but decided against. The prospect of a mustachioed human javelin emerging from the kitchen waving a cleaver, screaming, "Raus, raus, raus", saw to that.
