It has been an unforgivably long time since
either of us posted on here, and for this I sincerely apologise to all our
ardent fans (well, my mum reads this blog, at least). In the last few months,
we have moved house, been on holiday, attended a couple of weddings and
allotmented pretty darn hard. Oh, and I started my masters this week. All of
these things have cost time and money, leaving a depleted amount of either for
meals out. I know this is a flimsy excuse. But now we are back, I assure you,
from our summer hiatus.
Last
week, we decided to make use of a cinema voucher that was given to us by our
lovely friends James and Charlotte, and went to see Pride. A truly marvellous film. But more about that later. With a
few hours to kill before the film, we decided to take advantage of the tapas
happy hour at the Woolpack Yard.
Neither
of us had ever seen or heard of the Woolpack, but I had seen a couple of posts
about it on Facebook in recent weeks, and decided I liked the look of it.
Tucked away on Muspole Street, just off Duke Street, it is big and purple and
inviting. They have a few interesting beers that I’d never encountered before
(including their own Woolpack lager), cocktails, and an extensive tapas menu.
Between 5:30 and 6:30, Monday to Thursday, all tapas dishes are two for the
price of one – hence the appeal to us frugal young foodies. The girl behind the
bar was extremely friendly and welcoming when we went in, even offering us a
brief history of the pub, and we were soon seated in a cozy room decorated with
fairy lights – ubiquitous Norwich hipster-chic, but fun. Ben had a pint of
Yardbird Pale Ale, and I had some sort of posho sloe gin and elderflower
cocktail – I got the impression from our waitress’s eagerness to check back and
make sure it was ok that it was the first one she’d ever made, but it was very
nice.
The
menu is divided into meat, seafood and vegetarian. Everything sounded so good
that we both got a bit overexcited, but we managed to restrain ourselves and
choose six dishes. After we ordered, our lovely waitress let us know about the
fine range of board games on offer, and we had a raucous game of charades while
waiting for our food to arrive. (Ben only refrained from acting out the classic
song ‘My Ding-A-Ling’ due to the fact that there were children at the next
table).
Ben,
who is a fan of any pork of the pulled variety, went for the Jack Daniels
pulled pork tacquitos, which he proclaimed delicious, and even went on to
compare them to a similar dish at Wahaca in London. High praise indeed. The
black pudding croquettes, on the other hand, he found slightly bland and
disappointing. Could have used more pudding, apparently. I had the Cajun rubbed
crispy squid, partly because I love calamari and partly because I was amused by
the image of a hapless chef massaging a squid with Cajun spices. It was crispy
and spicy and delicious, and went very well with the smoked paprika mayonnaise
that came with another of our choices, sweet potato bon bons (amazing). We also
shared fried halloumi with spicy couscous (tasty, because duh, halloumi) and
gnocchi with roast tomato, goats cheese and caramelized onion. The latter was
definitely my favourite of the lot. I could easily have eaten a huge, non-tapas
sized bowl of it. I’m getting really hungry thinking about it now. I might have
to run straight back there now and eat about twelve portions of it, before Ben
gets home from work.
Due
to the two for one offer, our bill was pleasantly low for such nice food
(around 25 quid for six dishes, a pint and a half of beer, and a posh
cocktail). I’m not sure I’d go outside of the deal though, as I can imagine it
could very quickly get quite pricy. The Woolpack also does dessert tapas, but
we decided to buy Minstrels from Tesco and smuggle them into the cinema instead.
We
were full and happy, and after a chat with Ben’s aunt outside Jane Austen
College and another drink at the Rumsey Wells we toddled along to Vue, only to
find that we were the only people who had turned up to watch that particular
screening of Pride. The cinema was
empty. The only time anything even close to this has happened to me before was
at a midafternoon, weekday showing of a rather disturbing independent
Australian teen thriller, which my friend Bridget and I found ourselves
watching with only a solitary middle aged man for company. So, naturally, we
kicked our shoes off, sat in the comfy ‘luxury’ seats and made out a lot. Pride was incredibly inspiring,
entertaining and heartbreaking, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
So,
to sum up, go to the Woolpack Yard if you’re into nice booze and tasty,
interesting tapas-y food, with genuinely friendly, helpful service and a
twinkly sort of atmosphere. And go to Vue in the Castle Mall on a Thursday
night if you want a surprise private screening of a film of your choice.
