Tahini tingle

Webster's defines serendipity as ‘the phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for'. The OED is more precise:Serendipity: stopping to tie one's shoelace and finding a Lebanese restaurant.Until a fortnight ago, The Three Ways Restaurant had never graced my radar. I have thought long and hard about how this could happen, and have concluded that either:a) the elaborate window-dressing at The Carphone Warehouse has, over the years, so absorbed my attention that I am blind to all else within a fifty-yard radius; or (more likely)b) my new spectacles conduct high-frequency food-waves directly into my brain's falafel receptors.It's now half-past lunchtime on Saturday, and we have anniversary presents to buy each other. Wooden ones.A spoon, I'm told, would be inappropriate, and we've used up our parking permit quota, thereby killing off my dreams for a Trojan horse. It's clear that I'm floundering and I need inspirational fuel.Mrs Wifey also needs fuel, but can afford to go easy on the inspiration because she already knows what she's going to buy. All I know is that my capacity for abstract thought no longer extends beyond cous cous.Up above Going Places we claim the window nook overlooking Pret a Manger. It's hardly a tough bag though – we are, as ever, the last of the lunch crowd, and have the entire place to ourselves.I have the mixed mezze: chicken kebab, a couple of salady things, the second-best hummus I've ever eaten, and, for the first time in living memory, more bread than I can possibly force down my carb-loving cakehole. Mrs Wifey (maker of the first-best hummus I have ever eaten) has the soup, which comes with a wrap the size of a rounders bat.Great food: eleven quid (plus drinks). Could this be Norwich's best value lunch?I could start worrying about how something this excellent could be so cheap, but instead I put it down to karma. Statistically, I must have done something good at some point, surely?I shop. I succeed. Mrs Wifey shops. Norwich fails her. Whatever it is that she's after, Norwich doesn't sell it.I'm no theologist, but this must be sign that I am a *better* person. Looks like I don't need to start that Animal Hospital subscription after all.

A User - 10/09/2008 | report this review