Venue - Nashaa, 154 Longford Rd, Coventry
Attendees - Me, Dave, Harry and Andy "Villa"
A new taster was welcomed for this trip, Andy "Villa", who is essentially a Villa fan but who now lives in Southend and has adopted the mighty Blues as his club. I'm actually not sure who he would cheer for if we drew Villa in the cup... could be interesting!
Anyhow, he generously agreed to drive us to new re-arranged fixture on Bank holiday Monday evening(?) at the Ricoh Arena. Now this made parking interesting, because most of the stadium car park was already being utilised for a convention that had been going on since the Saturday, hence the re-arrangement, and being a bank holiday, most of the other car parks available were closing before the match finished, which wasn't helpful. However, he managed to pre-book parking at Wayland Ltd, official stadium parking about 20 minutes walk from the Ricoh.
We arrived in good time through the rain for our 6pm table reservation at Nashaa, a highly rated restaurant 15 minutes walk from the car park and about 20 minutes from the stadium. In fact, we were 40 minutes early, so allowing for the walk, we would have 25 minutes extra time so a stop en route via a pub for a quickie was the plan.
Well, it would have been, had we not turned the wrong direction out of the car park and walked for approximately 1 mile before realising, turning back and got onto the right road, negotiating a multi- junction road with no pavement or walkways directly under a bridge on the M6 and a large grassy, wet roundabout which we had to walk straight across. Andy blamed Google maps... seems rude not to.
Sure enough, the other direction saw us eventually arrive at the restaurant just over the brow of a canal bridge, plenty of pubs but no time to visit them as it was now bang on 6pm. Having walked about 3 miles we were now ready for some food... oh, and a Cobra.
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| Looking a bit puffed, Dave? |
The interior of the restaurant was clean and smart; there were 2 or 3 other tables being occupied (the place opened at 5pm) and we were immediately seated and given menus.
Spicy and plain poppodums with pickles were ordered while we decided on the main course and they were very nice... the spicy ones a touch burnt but the pickles were clearly home made and included Tamarind sauce, a deep red, spicy accompaniment together with the usual chopped onion and tomato, mango chutney, lime pickle and Raita.
Everyone ordered a main and a rice, plus we had 2 Peshwari naan breads and a mushroom bhaji to share. I opted for the Chicken Jalfrezi which initially I was disappointed in heat-wise but then I found the chillies... well, lets just say I needed three pints to everyone else's two in order to cool the mouth down! The flavours of all the dishes were superb with no complaints from anyone... it all went and the bill per head came in at £23 including a tip of around 15%! About right I'd say.
"Excuse me gents, sorry to interrupt your football chat, but you know your food? Well it's all ready. Shall I bring it to you?"
"No thanks, we just want to talk for a bit longer about tonight's possible team and potential changes to the offside rule, could you leave it out to get cold please?"
Let's face it, that just isn't going to happen. Cut the conversation killing, just bring us our beer and food! That would be perfect!
Aside from that, it was a pretty good curry, well worth a visit.
Marks -
Exterior - 8
Surroundings - 7
Interior - 9
Toilets - 8
Service - 8.5
Quality - 9
Value - 7
Overall - 8.07
The football
A cracking game in continual rain, ending 2-2. Probably a fair result, we could have been 3 or 4 up at half time instead of only 2-1 but our kepper kept us in it with several cracking saves including a penalty save in the second half. No complaints. The Ricoh is a tremendous stadium, one of my favourites.
Footnote -
This blogpost would not have been complete without a recount of the walk back to the car. First of all, we were at the wrong end of the ground to where we needed to be, so had to walk all the way around. In the pouring rain. We had been joined for the game by Andy's daughter Amy who had to get a cab back to the station, and this involved walking all the way in one direction before backtracking and intercepting a taxi on the main roundabout outside the stadium. Then Andy keyed in the car park address in good old Google Maps and off we set. Soon we were walking along the A444 towards the oncoming traffic in the dark and the rain which we though cannot be right. No, google maps says it is, so we persevered. Bearing in mind the car park was only meant to be 20 minutes walk from the stadium, we comfortably exceeded that with Google showing us still some distance away. We got there in the end having toeither walk in the gutter of the main dual carriageway and avoid the glare and constant flashing of the headlights from vehicles not expecting to see 4 drowned rats walking towards them, or choose the grass verge which was slightly safer but in deep grass, sopping wet and having to negotiate the frequent low hanging branch or protruding bush or hedge. After we while, we left the A444 and ended up on the approach road to the M6! We made it - obviously - but it took over 45 minutes. To say we were wet was an understatement. My hoodie was still soaked by the time I got home at about 1am and that was underneath my anorak that was still damp the following evening.
Just for fun, Dave retraced our steps on Google maps the day after. The yellow route is the one we should have taken, the red one is what we actually walked. Ignore the "Dropped pin" caption, there is an arrow at the end of each colour to show where we needed to end up.
Technology... you can't beat it!
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