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* The Fountain Bar & Grill
* The Library
* Indulge Grill & Bar
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1 Queen Street, Norwich, NR2 4SG
Tel: 01603 666868
Website: www.lovetoindulge.com
Expect to pay: £20-25 (approx) a head for two courses with drinks and £25-30 (approx) a head for three courses with drinks
Parking: No - Nearest parking meter parking or St. Andrews car park and walk. Would suggest walking or taking taxi.
Smoking: Yes - in bar (at time of visit)
I'd wanted to try this place for a while. I'd been to a friend's party in the bar a few months back and had a look at the menu and the wine list and it really excited me. At the time, we didn't have a grill restaurant (we now have 3 including Indulge!) and I was really interested in booking a table to see what it was like. We hadn't seen our friends Jason and Claire for a while and decided to try it out together.
When we got there, we were surprised to find the bar empty and that we were the only people in the restaurant. Unfortunately, this meant there wasn't much of an atmosphere in the restaurant but it did mean we could make as much noise as we wanted without annoying anyone.
I really like the decor in the restaurant, with the white chairs, wooden floors and plain brown tables. I'm not the biggest fan of the video screen at the back of the room because I can find it a bit distracting. It is a bit annoying having it there, especially when there is different music playing in the bar to what's on the screen. Luckily I had my back to it so it wasn't much of a problem - for me anyway.
I love the menu here. It's a meat eater's dream. I love the selection of burgers, steaks, ribs and grills etc and the choice of rubs and sauces to go with them. However, there is also a great veggie selection. Clare had a vegetarian meal this evening and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Strangely, there isn't a great selection of starters, just a few platters to choose from to share. Luckily, we were only there for a main and pudding.
Likewise, the wine and drink selection is also very good. Excellent selection of red and white wines and all the drinks in the world downstairs to make anything you fancied. If it had been a weekend I may have had a cocktail to start my meal.
The service was very good too. Even though we were her only table, we gave our waitress enough work to keep her busy all night because we kept forgetting to order or ask for stuff. She was very friendly and patient and also very attentive without going overboard. The only complaint I can have with her is that she forgot my order of corn on the cob. However, she did go and get one for me and gave it to me on the house.
The food itself was excellent and extremely good value. We will definitely be returning in the future.
I had: For main I had the mixed grill. This was a mixed grill with a difference and was utterly superb. I'm still thinking of it now! Instead of the usual 'farm on a plate' affair of sausages, steak, pork etc, this was made up of a half-rack of baby ribs (covered in a Mississippi bourbon glaze at my request), pork belly - thin slices of succulent pork with crispy skin, which I could have eaten all night and I had to fight the others off, and a pile of chicken wings. This came with homemade fries and a bowl of delicious house coleslaw. It was incredibly good and filled me perfectly. I was full but not too full as you can be sometime with a normal mixed grill. I still had room for pudding.
The choice for dessert was so frustrating! I wanted everything, which is a good thing with us because we decided to share the mini battered bananas with toffee sauce and ice-cream, the 'Devils Brownie', which came with chocolate sauce and a fruit skewer, and also the chocolate cookie and vanilla ice-cream stack. THESE are the kind of dessert at a place like this! They were sensational and I could've eaten a whole dish of all of them. The only complaint, if I had to have one, is that the banana fritters were a bit heavy for my liking but I still enjoyed them.
Definitely a place to come out to with friends for a really good value for money, informal and fun meal.
Food ***** Service **** Atmosphere ** Menu ***** Wine/Drinks *****
OVERALL = ****
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2 Guildhall Hill, Norwich, NR2 1JH
Tel: 01603 616 606
Smoking: Yes - in bar area (at time of writing)
Parking: No - nearest parking St. Giles Street or St. Andrews Road
Expect to pay: £20 (approx) a head for two courses with drinks and £25 (approx) a head for three courses with drinks
We were here to celebrate me having my contract extended at work. We had heard good things about this place. We were also very interested in how they'd renovated the old library and Citizen Advice Bureau.
I have to say it has been done wonderfully and it is actually quite amazing as you walk in. It feels so warm and welcoming but at the same time just like you've stepped back in time. I loved the decor and how they'd used the old architecture and also how they had a 'Reading Room' for a quieter dining experience. It just needed a few dusty books on some shelves around the place and you may just have felt you were back in the library.
We were met and sat by a very professional gentleman. Can't say it was the most pleasant greeting I've had but we were duly brought menus and water. He then, in my opinion, came back a bit too quickly to take our order when we hadn't even decided on wine. I didn't like that very much.
The restaurant has a very high ceiling and also a balcony with art adorning the walls, which leads to a bar, above the main floor. I liked this until a few people walked passed and then I kind of felt that I was being looked down on. Looking up and around, I have to say it felt quite 'grand' and that this would have suited a fine dining menu or maybe a good old British-style menu really well. What's on offer is far from that. I don't really know where it fits in. I know WHY they have opened this sort of restaurant. It is owned by the people who run Pinochios (Italian), St. Benedicts Restaurant (British/French) and Pulse (Vegetarian) so they have all bases covered. Catherine and I argued about this but I just didn't feel that the menu suited the place.
I also didn't like the atmosphere. Because the room is so big, the music had to be quite loud. It needed some jazz or blues or something mellow and atmospheric. What we got was some crappy ballad or love song album. We even got Tina Turner at one point! Not good. I felt the music was at too high a tempo and it didn't make me feel comfortable. Again, Catherine disagreed and she actually quite liked it!
The food was pretty good. Not great but it didn't disappoint. They do have a good selection of vegetarian food here but I would suggest coming here if you like your meat. It is a grill restaurant and therefore this is obviously what it specialises in.
The wine we had was excellent. A house bottle of Australian Shiraz that went perfectly with our meal.
The one major grumble - I know I've had a few already! - was the desert menu. We decided not to have one as nothing on it took our fancy. A very disapointing end to the evening as we'd decided we weren't going to have starters.
I had: For main (and only) course I had the mixed grill. A veritable feast of meat served on a wooden board. Fantastically succulent wild boar sausage, juicy lamb and pork chops, a beautifully cooked chicken breast, tasty lambs livers and a piece of rump steak. This was served with a delicious mini corn on the cob, onion rings and homemade chips. We knew they were homemade because we could see into the kitchen and watch some poor chap peel a massive bag of potatoes. The meal was pretty good and basically 'did what it said on the tin'. However, I do have a few minor grumbles. Some of the chips were a bit too crispy and small, the batter of the onion rings was too hard and just exploded when you put a fork or knife near them. But my real annoyance was the 'trough' that was part of the board the food came on. All the juices and the blood from the meat ran into this and I found it really difficult not to keep dipping my sleeve in it.
Overall, I'm still a bit confused about what I thought of The Library and if and when I might go back for a second opinion.
Rating:
Food *** Service *** Atmosphere ** Menu *** Wine/Drinks ****
OVERALL = ***
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41, Earlham Rd, Norwich, Norfolk NR2 3AD
Tel: 01603 626644
Smoking: Yes - outside. Strictly non-smoking inside
Parking: Yes and lots of it.
Expect to pay: £20 (approx) a head for two courses with drinks and £25 (approx) a head for three courses with drinks
It's my birthday! I turned 30 today. Oh deah. I wasn't looking forward to today but visiting here more than made up for it. In fact, this could now be the end of this review website because having this place so close to my home may mean I never go anywhere else. We'd been wanting to come here since it opened a few weeks ago. I might have mentioned that steaks and burgers are my favourite things and this had the daddy of all red meat menus. It didn't disappoint.
We had a very nice welcome as soon as we arrived and had a drinks order taken, given menus and told we could sit wherever we liked. As it was a nice evening, we decided to sit outside.
The service was excellent. Really friendly, attentive and they really seemed to care whether we had a good experience or not. Each person stopped to have a genuine chat.
The menu is fantastic. You basically choose which burger you want i.e. an 8oz Aberdeen Angus steak burger, a normal 4oz burger, lamb and mint, pork and maple syrup, veal and black olive, Guiness or one of the really interesting veggie choices, then the toppings - cheese (3 types), bacon, onion rings etc etc. Then you get a choice of potato - straw fries, fat chips, sweet potato chips, even Dauphinoise! It was heaven for me.
As we sat outside and it was a Tuesday, there wasn't much of an atmosphere but the fact that it was warm enough to sit outside was more than enough.
The food itself was superb. I think it may have been the best burger and chips I've ever had. A burger and a couple of beers. What more could a thirty year old man want on his birthay?
I had: The 8oz Aberdeen Angus steak burger with Danish blue cheese and bacon. It was awesome and I don't use that word lightly. I absolutely loved the fact that the waitress told us that all burgers are cooked to medium unless asked otherwise. A true sign of a quality burger and a quality place. Really meaty and tasty burger in a lovely sourdough bun complimented perfectly by the salty bacon and cheese. I loved it. It was so filling.
With this, we shared a bowl of fat chips, a bowl of sweet potato chips and a plate of the best onion rings I've ever tasted. Just a word of warning. You do not need this much food. We are pigs. If you are coming here for lunch, share a bowl of chips otherwise you won't be doing anything for the rest of the day. The chips were perfect. Skin on, crispy on the outside and beautifully fluffy in the middle. I could've eaten the sweet potato chips all night. Even though we were both full and decided to leave them, we still managed to polish them off.
I seriously couldn't move afterwards. I was completely satisfied and a very happy birthday boy. You must give this place a try as soon as possible.
Rating:
Food ***** Service ***** Atmosphere *** Menu ***** Wine/Drinks ***
OVERALL = ****
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