It seems like every contemporary story set in England includes a mention of a character getting "take-away curry". Admittedly, I had very little experience with Indian food prior to dating Dan and I would read these books having no clue that "Take-away Curry" was another way of saying take-out Indian food.
I've grown to love Indian food and was very excited to try it in England. Although, we didn't do "take-away", Dan did take me to The Mango, an Indian restaurant just a short walk from his parent's house in Newbury.
We arrived early and had the restaurant to ourselves.
I found the experience to be very similar to Indian restaurants that we have in California. The biggest difference was the portion sizes. The portions in England much smaller, allowing us to order a greater variety of items. I wish more restaurants in America did this, as I love to try a little bit of everything without being wasteful. That being said, we totally went overboard with the small plates!
We started with two shrimp appetizers that we shared.
I was a little full after the appetizers and beer, but I soldiered on and tried a bit of everything that we ordered.
We were ready to ask for the check and waddle home, when the server brought us complimentary digestifs.
My first English curry was a success. I look forward to going back to The Mango on future visits to England.
Dan talks a lot about the Full English Breakfast experience and on the last day of our trip, I finally got to try it out. Unlike America, there are not a lot of breakfast places in England. This isn't to say that you can't eat breakfast out, it's just not as common as in in the states and there are less options.
We went to the breakfast buffet at the Hilton in Newbury for our meal. On a whole, most of the choices were things that you would find at a similar type of buffet in America, however there were a few notable differences.
First, beans for breakfast. I like baked beans, but I associate them with BBQ's and summer. I like to mix them with potato salad and put them on my hot dogs! Instead, at breakfast, I mixed them with my eggs and potatoes. It was good. It's not something that I would want to eat everyday, but it works.
The best thing about breakfast in England, is the bacon. I'm not a big bacon fan. I really don't understand the bacon craze in America, with people wanting to put bacon in every recipe or wearing shirts proclaiming their love for bacon. It's not that good. However, the bacon in the UK is delicious. It's thick cut, more similar to what American's would call Canadian Bacon or Canadian's would call back bacon. Whatever you call it, it's yummy.
One of the highlights of our trip was a roast dinner that Dan's sister Ali made for us in her home.
Ali's roast dinner - delicious!
As much as I enjoyed the dinner, the dessert was the show stopper. Ali made an English Trifle, which is a mousse-like, chocolate soaked in alcohol dessert. Holy Cow was it fantastic! It's pretty to look at too, having layers and served in a giant glass bowl. A big thank you to Ali and the rest of the Higgins family for having us over for dinner!
