‘I TRIED SMITHY’S TAKEAWAY FROM GAVIN & STACEY – AND IT BROKE ME’
Wales on Sunday reporter Ben Summer ordered the same Indian meal as Smithy in the classic sitcom Gavin and Stacey. Here’s how he got on...
CHICKEN bhuna, lamb bhuna, prawn bhuna, mushroom rice, bag of chips, keema naan and nine poppadoms... and a saag aloo. You get the gist. Smithy’s Indian order from Gavin & Stacey – delivered in one of TV’s most memorable rants after he’s faced with the risk of sharing his food – is so wellknown that it’s sold on tea towels, T-shirts and mugs across the UK, especially on Barry Island.
It’s also, clearly, too much food for one person to eat. It’s ridiculous – impossible. That’s why I decided to try to eat it.
Of course, you can order the above items from any Indian takeaway across the country if you’re bold enough, but it took a special deal to tip me over the edge. Meghna Balti Express in Adamsdown, Cardiff, offers the above items as a special “Smithy’s Indian Takeaway!” deal for £36, so I had to give it a go.
When I ordered it on Just Eat, the restaurant automatically applied a 20% discount bringing the total to £29.30. For three curries and more sides than one person could possibly need, that felt pretty reasonable. The mushroom rice was a large, by the way, in case the order wasn’t big enough already.
It arrived promptly in an actual crate, like greengrocers use to transport fruit and veg. On a wet evening in Cardiff, the rain had threatened to pierce the poppadom packaging, but the goods had survived. Once unpacked, it was a daunting sight; a mountain of food to get through.
I wasn’t ambitious that I’d get the whole thing finished, to be honest. Once again: three curries. So, I had my housemate Andrea ready and waiting to attack anything I didn’t get to – and she was already eyeing up my bhunas.
The best course of action was to load up a plate with a bit of everything.
Let’s start with the bhunas. The chicken tasted fine enough but was really dry and chewy, which didn’t make my job any easier. The prawns were miniscule and seriously difficult to actually find in a sea of the sauce, which was disappointing – a king prawn version would work much better.
The lamb was lovely, and easily the highlight for me. In general, the quantity of meat in the curries felt relatively stingy, but I wasn’t complaining – partly due to the price, partly because it meant less for me to get through.
Since moving to Cardiff I’ve been won round to ordering my curry ‘arf ‘n’ arf’ but in this case the chips just added more carb-y challenge to a crowded plate. Dipping them, and the keema naan, in curry sauce helped significantly.
The mushroom rice was also absolutely fine, but surprisingly, the poppa
doms were the hard bit. I could conquer the rest, and there’d still be a stack of poppadoms staring back at me.
If I’d have ordered this as a normal takeaway, between two or three people, it would’ve been perfectly nice and I reckon the £29.30 price tag for the lot was reasonable. But I had a task to complete, and I’d already conceded a mental own-goal far too early on.
Looking at what I’d already eaten, and what was still left, I allowed my housemate to start loading up her plate. Thinking it would be an insurmountable task to finish what was in front of me, I felt bad for letting her sit there with the food getting cold.
Do I think I would’ve finished it all if I’d stayed strong and tried to eat the lot? Absolutely not. Do I feel a deep, searing guilt at letting myself (and you, dear reader) down by effectively admitting defeat this early? Yes – it genuinely kept me up at night.
I will say I had a good go. The plate pictured above wasn’t the end of it – I was grabbing at extra chips and bits of naan as I went, and loaded up a plate of seconds. I ultimately ate a lot more than I would for an average takeaway, and was feeling pretty ill by the end due to the sheer amount I’d eaten.
I sat back in my chair, bitterly disappointed. My housemate – and, by this point, another housemate and a friend who had gathered to watch my efforts – waited eagerly in the wings, and I gave in, letting them at the remainder of the leftovers.
As I finished eating, I tweeted a photo of myself with the takeaway. It started to get traction with well-wishers praising me for taking on the challenge. How could I explain to the adoring public that I’d failed them – that I’d done what Smithy never would have, and (whisper it) shared my takeaway?
I desperately wanted to succeed at this because I like Gavin & Stacey way, way more than I should (I once wore a ‘My Niece Went to Greece and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt’ T-shirt to a house party and recreated Bryn and Nessa’s karaoke scene).
I failed miserably to finish Smithy’s takeaway order and I’m trying to come up with excuses. So here’s my excuse: the huge crate of food being carried through to the kitchen, the frantic unpacking and – once I admitted defeat – the arguments over who got to eat what... it was a perfect reflection of what was being mocked on the Gavin & Stacey episode.
Art imitates life imitates art – I’d created in my own kitchen what James Corden and Ruth Jones parodied all those years ago. If there’s anything that I’ll accept is a British tradition worth preserving, it’s the humble takeaway, and the experience of ordering and eating one with a group of friends, and one way or the other I experienced that in the course of my challenge.