February Falafels

Once the initial optimism of January fades away – (no drinking, gym 3 times a week) we are left with February- cold, bitter, and disappointed. You can’t be bothered to exercise after work, or cook. Its time for a falafel to eat and Netflix for company.

Here is a summary of the month’s falafel, not including the Grecian (already reviewed,  or that one that I ate but couldn’t be arsed to review. FYI it was pricey and overly crisp.)

The first one was half eaten climbing a hill and then finished off in the darkness of a cinema. We had nipped to the takeaway in between work ending and the cinema beginning and arrived on time for once. We even had time to make this small recording.

 

Arches Fish Bar                

226 Cheltenham Road

I would like to stress although their falafel was CRAP, and they made us wait AGES, their chips are actually pretty reasonable.

 

The second one was reported by a Rate My Falafel insider of Telecommunications Tower, Bristol, home to Nespresso, the Army and the Daily Mail call centres. He sped out to enjoy a falafel @Dandos, a chain of Bristol based takeaways which vie against each other for squalor and low quality. This was no exception, with footprints on the walls and a general sense of ‘grime;’. They don’t really need to bother making an effort I suppose, with a name like dandos, a pun on the famous nandos chain. they mainly service fried chicken but do have an array of disgusting looking kebab meat and falafel. The falafel is served by a friendly guy who offers you an choice of wrap or pita (chose the wrap).

Positives : “Good all round fafafel, well wrapped, fills you up and tasty.’

Negatives -” normal size is £4 – its too much , should be £3. But maybe that’s inflation or something.”

The most recent falafel was sampled in the more exotic far away location of Cardiff, Wales. We had gone there for the weekend and had the naive hope that it might not rain continuously for the entire time, and that we might be able to have a nice walk somewhere. Alas, the only walking we did was to the nearest falafel restaurant, on City road.

 

The walk took us by an array of closed falafel shops until we reached La Shish, a suitable looking choice. I was just frankly to be happy to get inside, sick of the wet pissy rain sloshing directly in my face. It was more of a restaurant than takeaway, though takeaway was an option, and they had other items on the menu including stuffed peppers, aubergine dishes, etc. Naturally I was forced to chose the falafel.

The falafel itself was not very flavoursome and was really rather bland. It was a good texture though, nice and soft and not too dry. It came with hummus and with yoghurt on it, which I had not asked for (vegans beware). The salad was OK but too onion heavy and did not include any of the delicious olives that I had sampled from other dishes. It was wrapped well but the bread was average (I’d had the option to have it wrapped with naan but I thought that would be weird.

However, at £3.75 it was huge and I was inside which was really pleasant considering the disgusting weather raging outside.

I also enjoyed an avocado, nuts, honey and date smoothie that was delicious.

February’s Falafels – on the whole, not great.