A trip down Happy memory lane....

When my wife and I first moved to Tonbridge in the late 1980s an average Friday night would be a well earned few pints in the Ivy House, a couple of nice drinks in what used to be called the Office Wine Bar, maybe a cheeky one in The Castle and then on to the Happy Cuisine down Avebury Avenue for an excellent Ruby Murray. On successive Friday nights we probably ate the whole menu between us. Then we had kids and, although we tried to pretend that we could still go to restaurants and that it wouldn't change our lives like it had so many of our friends', all that gradually changed. These days we hardly ever go out; so last night we decided that we would. It seemed really odd walking down to the Punch and Judy, in St. Stevens Street. When we walked in the bar we felt a little like the American tourists walking in to that pub in the Yorkshire moors in American Werewolf in London. The place was pretty dead for a Friday night, perhaps the in-crowd were already at the Humphrey Bean or the Slug and Lettuce, not in a coppers' pub, as the P&J is probably thought of. We had a couple of pints of their rather excellent London Pride which went down very well on a cold night, as last night was. Then on to our old favourite haunt, The Happy Cuisine. Again hardly anyone there, three groups of people in the whole time we were there. It was different and yet so familiar, a paint job and a little refurbishment, but unmistakably our old place, the waiters were very friendly, especially the owner's son and we had a really nice meal. Predictably I had a Chicken Tika Mossala, always a banker, and my wife plumped for an old favourite of her's, a Korai King Prawn, and we had all the old trimmings like Sag Aloo, popapums, naan breads, lime pickle, mango chutney etc. etc. Yes and after the meal they still brought the hot towels and After Eight mints, as they did fifteen years previously, a tried and trusted restaurant technique to soften the blow of the bill and to maximise their tip potential. We left them a rather good tip of around £3 (against my better judgement, but then my wife always was more generous than me on that score) well at least it would have been generous in 1989! We left feeling reassured that life in the Happy Cuisine carries on, the waiters who served us are probably the sons and nephews of the waiters who served us before but they're every bit as friendly and attentive. I like the more up market Indian restuarants like the Alishan, which are springing up every where but, for me, I'll always have the best memories of sitting by the table next to the fish tank in the good old Happy Cuisine....