
Now, it’s not often that I retrace my steps and write about the same place in Norwich twice, but what the hell? I’m going to anyway.
As ladies that lunch, my bestie and I struggled to decide where to eat this Easter weekend; No. 33 always has a queue out the door, b’nou doesn’t open for lunch and chips were definitely not an option after gorging myself on chocolate. So, where to?
We decided to take our chances on Pandora’s Kitchen – and we’re lucky we arrived when we did. There was just one table left at midday, as it seems lots of people had the same thought that we did. Either that or they were drawn in by the warm scent of roasting meat…
Anyway, having nabbed the last free table in the establishment, the bestie and I settled down for an intense nattering session, largely oblivious to the menu. Thankfully the waitresses were very understanding and gave us plenty of time to decide what we wanted to eat and drink.
Salad days
The menu isn’t huge, with a selection of soups, stews and sandwiches. It becomes considerably larger though, when you realise all the sandwiches are available in salad form, and they will serve up extra leaves instead of bread. It was ideal considering my chocolate-related guilt. Salad even won out over the roast in a roll (it is literally what it sounds like). Yep. That’s right, I had vegetables at Easter.
I toyed with the idea of getting the pastrami and mustard sandwich as a salad, but eventually came to the conclusion that it wasn’t likely to work. There’s a reason that isn’t already a well-known salad. So I went with The Greek; hummus, avocado, roasted peppers and lots of tomato, leaves and cucumber. I felt virtuous just ordering it!
Obviously because it was a salad, it didn’t take long to appear and it was so colourful and bright that it made me smile! The hummus was really more-ish – not too intensely garlicky but flavoursome and thick. The avocado was perfectly ripe, although could have done with a bit of seasoning, and the roasted peppers were sweet and smokey.
The only thing lacking was dressing. I know salad should be healthy – and there was coleslaw – but a little balsamic vinegar would have helped the leaves go down. However, I’m sure I would have been furnished with some had I asked.
At £5.95 it was quite a reasonably priced lunch too, considering how much veg was on the plate and how much my halo gleamed afterwards! I can definitely recommend Pandora’s Kitchen if you want a diet-friendly lunch.
(Needless to say, after a few hours’ window shopping, our resolve wavered and we ended up having a cream tea later in the day, but I’m trying to forget about that!)