Indian Brewery Co., Birmingham UK @IndianBrewery @NLi10

No lads night out would be complete without a few beers and some takeaway food, even if the lads are all scientists and the take-away is actually eaten in a trendy street-food location.  On a work night out it was decreed that we should trek over to the Indian Brewery Company to sample their fantastic sounding menu.

As is traditional the person whose leaving do it was completely over ordered getting us enough food for at least 6 people - to the extent that they had to bring it in shifts! I'd been a little more sensible choosing the one item I required and then sniping other parts of the meal as it appeared.

Above we see the first course of the Royal Rumble - which is basically one of everything on the menu except we had added an extra mixed grill (and my Fat Naan).

With my limited ability to tolerate large amounts of spicy food this was more than enough for me (you get two of the above for £7.50) and the flavour was simply divine. Hot enough to be interesting, but not so much that the herbs and subtlety is lost.  I could eat one of these right now - easily.  Good enough that I was messaging multiple friends and explaining that I'd take them soon.

Here is one of the mixed grills, I picked at this to help out, but the kebab was a spicy risk that I dodged and the rest was mostly demolished by my companions.  I had more than enough pakora and masala chips to make the visit worth while.

Here is the full menu - considering that you could easily feed five on the Royal Rumble alone the prices are very fair.  If I went 'alone' I'd have the Chicken Run fat naan again with Pakora Pops.

The drinks were very confusing - I had a Limca which seems to be a kind of Indian Banta style flat lemonade.  It was decent enough, but maybe a bit too sherbet like for my tastes.  I'll try the High5 cola style version next time.

Ordinarily at places like this the beer drinkers extol the virtues of their own distinct selections and then swap sips and make plans for round two.  No-one liked their initial drink - and pints were even left at the end! This struck me as strange for a 'brewery' style location and maybe our taste buds are just not tuned in the same as the local crowd.  The green can (Siera?) was bought as a replacement drink by one person and enjoyed, but the remainder was very much drunk under sufferance and a second round was not purchased.

Overall though the food was amazing, the portions more generous than anticipated and a return visit assured.  There just aren't enough work trips out available to eat in all the great places that Birmingham has attracted recently!

Maynards Bassetts Wine Gums Tangy (WH Smiths) By @SpectreUK

These new Maynards Bassetts Wine Gums Tangy are the usual fruit flavoured gums, but they have a sour sugar coating. There are five flavours to choose from in the packet with different gummy shapes. I started with orange, which was very fruity and had a decent sourness to it. Next came the yellow almost white coloured lemon flavour, which was a little sourer than the orange, but a little less fruity. I wasn't surprised at that, as orange can have a stronger flavour and lemon gummies usually have a sourness of their own, even without the sour sugar coating. The green coloured gummies were next, which had a juicy apple flavour with a light sourness to them. All three flavours had been great so far, but I already had a preference for the orange gummies, which was a pity as I couldn't see anymore in the packet. I do have a 'thing' where I like equal shares of coloured sweets in packets. I'm sure this is difficult on big production lines, but it can't be just my preference alone? The red coloured gummies were next, and they packed quite a sour punch. Raspberry flavour if I'm not mistaken, thankfully not cherry, and they were fruitier and sourer than the orange gummies. Having said that, the black coloured blackcurrant gummies were by far the fruitiest, but the reds were the most sour. The reds for me had the most balanced fruitiness and sourness in the packet. There were lots of reds and also black gummies, with fewer greens and yellows. Somewhere out there I'm sure there's a packet full of orange gummies…

Information on the packet;
The 165g packet contain suggested four gummy services which had 88 calories, 0.1g of fat, 16g of sugar, and 0.01g of salt. See photograph for ingredients.

Titbits Gourmet Bites: Tomato, Cheddar, Basil and Oats (Yorkshire Crisps) By @Cinabar

These new Gourmet Bites from the Yorkshire Crisps company are not potato based, instead these are flavoured biscuit “titbits” of flavour. Like the crisps they are presented in a posh drum, and also have luxury flavours. I was trying out Tomato, Cheddar, Basil and Oats.
The Titbits Gourmet Bites are small, round but still quite chunky. You can tell from the colour of them that they had plenty of tomato in the ingredients, as there is a very distinctive orange colour to them. We used them in place of crisps with a sandwich to nibble on while watching TV.
The flavour was mild, there was sweet tomato and herbs, and a pleasing hint of cheese. I loved the basil, and these had such a good Italian taste. They are very easy to munch on and the flavour is nice, and easy going. I was impressed that the oat taste came through as strongly as it did giving these a good wholesome flavour, and they had a buttery after taste. They are easy to munch on, but posh enough to save for when guests come over. It is worth having some of these in a cupboard for the start of the Christmas season and when visitors start appearing.

Cadbury Roses Cake Bars (Strawberry Dream/Coffee Escape) (@Morrisons) By @Cinabar

These new Roses Cake Bars from Cadbury are newly listed on the Morrisons website, and mimic some of the chocolates from the Roses chocolates selection. I managed to pick up the Coffee Escape and Strawberry Dream varieties.

Strawberry Dream
So this is based on the lovely strawberry cream from Roses chocolate. There is a layer of sponge, topped with a pink creme. The flavour is very full on and leaves no doubt about the fruity strawberry tastes. The berries pack an excellent punch, and go well with the milk chocolate flavours and the light and fluffy sponge.

Coffee Escape
This is a similar cake bar, with light sponge, only this time there is a coffee cream layer in the mix. The aroma of this bar was very rich from the second the wrapper was unpeeled, and I loved the rich tones of coffee cream. The coffee flavour was full on but it was sweet and flavoursome and very enjoyable.

These new Roses Cake Bars were very much full of flavour, and both the strawberry and coffee were rather vibrant. Both varieties were a good combination with the chocolate and very easy to eat. I was pleased that they were individually wrapped as this means they are just right to tuck into my lunch box for a chocolatey treat at work.

Sushido, Sutton Coldfield UK @sushidouk @NLi10

When thinking of great Japanese food Sutton Coldfield is not the first place that springs to mind.  At one of our many (many) games nights it was suggested that we'd all like Japanese food and there wasn't a reasonable option on the chosen food app.  What to do! One of the group remembered that a restaurant that he'd always fancied when driving past had a big sign up saying 'we are now online for deliveries' or similar and a quick Google later we found them and ordered away!

The SUSHIDO website is here if you live locally!

They warned us that they could take an hour, but delivered in around 40 -  a rarity that other local places could take note of! And not only that, the food was really well packaged and came with chopsticks and sauces ready to be mixed to eat.

Naturally I had the Katsu Chicken Curry to put them head to head with Birmingham favourites Yakinori (who win all kinds of awards with this, their signature dish).  The quality was certainly close and I'd have to try the restaurant to get a perfect comparison but I think the Yakinori version edges it.  The fact that I'm not able to dismiss the SUSHIDO version instantly speaks volumes to the quality though, and everything here was similarly good.  And at £60 for 4 people including sides it was very reasonably priced.

It's a veritable banquet and the four of us had more than enough to go around.

The sushi had survived the trip well and I am told that the wasabi was particularly potent!  As the location of the restaurant makes it hard for us to just pop in (which is a shame as I think they'd wow us in person). I know we will be certainly ordering from here again and probably even having extra games nights locally as an excuse to try more of the menu.

A victory for small businesses with easy to Google names and 'We Deliver' signs!

Bonus mini review: the host had some Kikkoman brand Plum Wine, which oddly I'd not had before.  It was very warming and had a nice deep flavour - but I'll stick to soft drinks (and large quantities of their soy sauce!).