Friday 12 December 2014

Turkey Christmas Dinner @ Hilton Hotel, Bracknell



Welcome to my unexpected Christmas special.

I didn’t intend to review my work Christmas dinner – it doesn’t really count as a Sunday roast despite having most of the ingredients, however this was something else.

Generally I loathe these types of gatherings – they seem like something a cruel government would inflict on its citizens as punishment, however I actually like a couple of my colleagues, there was gravy on offer, it was free and included some free drinks.  It being a Hilton, I was expecting the lovely Paris to be DJing, sadly there was not even a hologram of her DJing.  Perhaps our Christmas party budget does not stretch to £500,000 for the DJ.

Anyway, I straightened my hair, filled up my new hip flask with vodka and I was reddehtegurrrr, as we say in ‘Ull.  By the way, it is a city in the north of England.  No, it isn’t near Newcastle.

The starter was pate.  I have to gurrrr back up north in 10 days so I thought best to reduce my risk of being beaten up and declined to eat it.  Otherwise I’ll be accused of being a Cockney again.  Urrrrgh yuv lost yurrr akkscent, yurrahCockneh.

The main meal arrived.  This I can eat.  Though whether I should have done is another question.

 
The sprouts were anaemic-looking green balls which one imagines could have been excreted by Dale Winton after a particularly long greens-only diet.

Carrots.  It is hard to do carrots wrong and they were mass-cooked and microwaved in standard format.

Parsnips.  Uncooked.  At least they were defrosted.

Was there any chance perhaps of some nice, crispy roast potatoes?  Ho Ho Ho.  3 small soggy items with a rough edge, kind of like a fine sandpaper.

And finally, the piece de resistance – the turkey.  Now turkey can be dry when cooked but this was extra dry.  I didn’t taste any turkey and can only assume that it was some recycled cardboard reformed and injected with turkey stem cells.  MacDonalds chicken nuggets have a closer resemblance to meat than this turkey did.

You may also have noticed some gooey thing on top of the processed things.  I couldn’t quite decide what this was – imagine stuffing, but in a jelly texture that tastes of bacon.

The gravy, sorry, I mean shiny brown water, was invisible when my dinner arrived.  However they had a gravy boat especially for me so I could drown my reformed manufactures.  Interestingly, the remaining gravy in said gravy boat actually had some consistency to it an hour later.

Now I have had a worse meal before.  A group of us went to Island Bar many years ago and some food was actually still frozen upon arrival.  At least this dinner was defrosted and microwaved.  Not sure when it was microwaved as I do not recall any particular warmth.

When I was at university, I did once just complete the name section on an exam paper to see if I got a mark for it.  I didn’t.

In a similar kind of way, I feel that the Hilton hotel does deserve at least some credit for not serving frozen food and also not giving me food poisoning.  Not quite a whole point though.

So I give it a 0.8 out of 10.

I did enjoy the bread roll.  And yes I did get chucked out of university.  Voluntarily.

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