Tim Tim, Monkmoor Road
Here we go! The day of Chinese restaurant reckoning! With a whopping 5 recommendations, it’s time to tuck into Tim Tim. I had never heard of it, didn’t know where it was or what might make it special. For me, that is the recipe for the answer to this entire project; the calling card of a hidden gem! You guys set the bar of expectation pretty high. The constant mentions of this mystical and magical sounding vegan menu got my attention. And comments like ‘Tim Tim is the absolute sex’……not just ‘the’ sex, but the ‘absolute’ sex! Really makes you think and wonder if you’ve experienced ‘absolute’ sex. I can’t be sure. It sounds quite extreme to me. Maybe it’s one of those things that when you know, you know. You know? I don’t know. I might have. I can’t be sure. Maybe that’s another project for when this one’s complete? ‘The Hungry Guy’s Quest for Absolute Sex’ - has a ring to it…….Maybe it isn’t one I should blog about though? Hmm, better also check with my wife that she’s on board with embarking on this journey with me. I can’t see it being a problem with her. Maybe she will reveal that she’s had ‘absolute’ sex and might be able to tell me if I have or not. If she has, I hope it involves me, otherwise that could start a hugely confidence crushing conversation that I would have to pretend I was fine with! And what if she says that we’ve had it but I didn’t realise? That would be another awkward conversation. I would have to talk to her about it, though. Not sure I could achieve it on my own….alllthooughhh?…..Thinking about it, this all sounds far too risky and this Tim Tim experience might just deliver all the ‘absolute sex’ I need, literally on a plate…….well, some plastic tubs that I will empty onto a plate. So let’s put that huge can of worms and potentially awkward conversation with my wife on hold until I’ve scoffed a weeks amount of calories in just under 30 minutes………..
I feel like we need to set a bit of a scene for this one. It’s the weekend before me and ‘the Mrs’, the ‘old ball and chain’, are off on our honeymoon and we are super excited (a trip of a lifetime with the women of my dreams - what’s not to be excited about). We are excited to a point where we have been slowly zoning out of work for days. Palming things off wherever possible. ‘Let’s pick this up when I’m back’ came out of my mouth (or fingers) so many times that I almost started saying it to absolutely everyone about absolutely anything. Every time I said it, a little pulse of excitement. A feeling like I had won. A victory, a rare and sweet, sweet victory. Maybe this is what absolute sex feels like? A rare and sweet victory?
The problem is, all these ‘sweet victories’ stack up to a major stress pile when you get home and can’t keep up with just how many people want to ‘pick something back up’ let alone what it is you ‘dropped’ before holiday. Makes me think this can’t be absolute sex - surely there shouldn’t be repercussions to ‘absolute sex’ - is there a price to pay? Maybe I don’t want to experience it?
Anyway, back to setting the scene…………..
It’s the weekend before we go away; so like any true Brits, we’ve stopped buying fresh food, stopped cooking to help prevent mess and we are about to embark on a dust busting deep clean of the entire house. The sort of ripping up the carpets to hoover underneath type of deep clean. We must ensure our house is at it’s cleanest and most organised when we are not there. We wouldn’t want to enjoy that sort of cleanliness when you’re home. And of course you want to make sure there is some dust build up for when you’re back so you get to do it all again! The holiday bookending deep cleans should be classed as religious holidays.
If you didn’t need more reason for a takeaway feast, we were also hanging out with our best friends, we had spent the afternoon down the pub AND the sun had been blazing all afternoon. If I knew what it was, I might have described this situation as ‘absolute sex’. Parents will know how rare this sort of afternoon is, so Dad got in full holiday mode. The pints started to sink. This kind of action can spread like wildfire around Dad’s. If there’s one Dad in the group going hell to leather, it’s basically a free pass for all the other Dad’s to jump on board. Before you know it, its like a scene from a night out with Gazza at Euro 96!
So 2 pints later, feeling light headed and slightly giddy; catching the eye of the other Dad, with a look of mild desperation and some sort of validation that they also realise their mistake, the drinking slowed back down. Time to place the order!
We live in an age where calling a takeaway order directly to the restaurant carries with it a ton of trepidation. The nerves are real, there’s a completely irrational, underlying hope that they don’t actually answer. You can turn to your group and announce ‘Good news and bad news guys. Bad news, I haven’t ordered the takeaway. Good news, I didn’t have to speak to someone’. It’s weird, I find speaking on the phone so rare now that it also makes me say the strangest things. Sentences I would never usually conjure up just come flying out of my brain. It’s hard to believe that we are moving towards a world where people view speaking to each other as inconvenient and almost awkward.
The woman did answer…………….'Good news and bad news, guys’………..
I’ll jump in at this point and say that someone’s recommendation for this place included ‘the lady when you order is always very cute and sweet!’. I couldn’t think of a better way to put this to the test. A giddy, excited, 3 pint deep, pub and sunshine fuelled Dad is on the line………..I find placing large orders super stressful. Doesn't matter what it is. I wish you could see the sweat dripping off me when I’m placing a hire order with Tipples for a large event. The shakes are real. I’ve written and checked my list more times than Santa does (actually, that’s not the best example, he only checks it twice…..apparently) but it doesn’t stop me feeling the pump. WHAT IF I FORGET THE TEASPOONS!!!!!!
So placing an order for a takeaway, a booze and sun fuelled takeaway at that, is serious pressure. What if I forget something? What if Al doesn’t get the chips he so desperately wants? I will have let everyone down. Every single sun soaked, Dad, adorning a beer garden in the country will want my guts for garters! Better focus, better speak clearly……….the list!!! Where’s the list?!!!! Now, what do you do when you’ve written the list on your phone, but you need to use your phone to place the order. Most people might think about using the ‘speaker’ function on their phone. That won’t work - the stakes are too high. You lose audio clarity using the speaker function. That risks the entire mission! This Dad’s bright idea is to send the list to his wife, then use his phone to call and read the list off his wife’s phone - nothing can go wrong. A plan quickly straightened out by the more clear thinking wife who suggests the Dad just borrows her phone to make the call and uses his phone to read the list. It’s easy to forget that absolutely everyone has credit these days. The one thing every phone company dishes out on absolutely every phone contract these days is unlimited calls/minutes - because absolutely everyone are avoiding phone calls at all costs!
The menus had pretty much everything on them you would expect. Nothing really stood out as different. The vegan menu was handy and actually a really nice touch. It can be really hard trying to filter through long menus trying to see the symbols to see what is or isn’t vegan - well done Tim Tim! This is the most useful part of any menu I have seen so far on this project. Although I did feel marginally let down. I am unsure why, but I had imagined this mystical vegan menu as being something totally different, containing special dishes - almost like a secret sort of menu. What was I actually thinking? A menu that only vegans can order off? Like you have to give some sort of vegan ID to prove you can have it? Honestly, I do not know what is wrong with me sometimes!
…..'Hello there, do you deliver to the local area?'……..
Well that isn’t how I usually start a conversation………..Who asks that as their opening gambit? Why would you ask that? In that way? The formality of it cripples my conversational confidence. This order will never be right! I’m slowly sinking deep into my beer garden chair. What isn’t helping is the uproar of laughter from my wife, my closest friends and basically everyone around me. In making sure I was speaking clearly, I managed to project my voice across quite a large area of the beer garden……
What I can be sure of is this conversation is definitely NOT the ‘absolute’ sex!
I think what didn’t help the nerves was that I was about to reel off an order so large that I might as well have said what we weren’t having off the menu. To sprinkle just a little more anxiety on to this whole ‘shit-uation’ I had been asked to ask if they would do a dish that isn’t on the menu!!! The ultimate FU to any establishment. ‘I am terribly sorry, but this in depth and detailed menu just isn’t enough for me, I want to write my own!’ It was only Salt & Pepper Chips though - so that seemed fairly reasonable.
Now, every time I order chips from a Chinese I always think about the scene from Phoenix Nights……'No, no, nooooo………you don’t stir fry chips…..' which now adds the pressure of me laughing down the phone! It’s fine, they will do them. I can feel the conversational tides are turning in my favour.
The Order (its a big one):
Pork Yuk Sung
Singapore Vermicelli Noodles
Salt & Pepper Chips
Special Curry
Crispy Shredded Beef
Shrimp Egg Foo Yung
Mixed Veg & Cashew Nuts
House Special Fried Rice
Sweet & Sour Dip
Prawn Crackers
The Price: £59.50
I felt like this order has taken about 4 days, its been about 4 minutes but my confidence is brewing nicely. I’ve got to the end of the list and all that’s left to mention are the prawn crackers. Surely you would expect prawn crackers to be included with an order this size? But how do you tackle it? 3 1/2 pints of Stowford’s and the answer is head on! I’ve watched enough of The Apprentice to know sales and negotiations are all about the leading questions……
….'How much are your prawn crackers?'…………..'We will send you a large bag for free’………Dad’s nailed it! Absolute cloud 9! I am unsure if ‘absolute’ sex could feel this good! Absolutely everything ordered. Absolutely everything accounted for. The customer service was exemplary and the lady on the phone was amazing - good shout whoever put that on their recommendation!
…..'NOTHING BUT GOOD NEWS GUYS’………
As with all but one of the takeaways so far, Tim Tim are cash only and cash on delivery. We might all be walking around with unlimited minutes and endless credit on our phones, but absolutely no-one is walking around with that kind of cold, hard cash on them. And if they are, in this day and age, they are not to be trusted! Anyway, Spar’s only down the road so it’s a reason to also go and buy some more bottles to enjoy with this feast!
They gave us an hour for the food to arrive but it got to us way quicker than expected. By a whopping 20 minutes!!! It caught us a little by surprise but just meant one of the Dad’s on the cash and booze run had to leg it home to pay up! (that Dad was not going to be me, I had already done my work for the day). The smell of the food was amazing! But then the quantity was so large, it’s not really surprising it rapidly filled the house!
The first thing I actually noticed about the food was just how good the veg looked. Really vibrant, really fresh and it looked like it had some bite to it. Very impressive for a delivery service that has all the veg sweating away in those plastic boxes while it’s delivered. The other notable observation is the colour of the sweet and sour sauce dip. Vibrant, illuminous, gleaming, luminescent. There aren’t words to describe the unearthly glow the dip had. The reddest of reds you can imagine. ‘Absolute’ red, if you will.
The yuk sung was much wetter than others. Also much spicier. I wasn’t too sure about the wetness, it made it a little more difficult to eat in the lettuce leaves and that split the room down the middle, but I was all over flavour, as was everyone - really tasty. Really nice to have something with some serious punch to it. I have found most dishes on this project to be marginally lacking on the seasoning front. Like almost getting there but then maybe toned down a touch for our feeble western palates. A big bug bare of mine when it comes to UK Chinese food. I always thought yuk sung was traditionally a very dry mix but I have no idea if that’s right or not. And does it even matter? It was delicious, that will do!
Powerful flavours was across the board with this takeaway. In a really good way. Everything seemed to pack a punch. Even the vermicelli noodles and egg fried rice seemed to carry more flavour than others.
The chips weren’t the best. The flavour was there but the chips were strangely a little dry, a little cardboardy. A shame considering everything else seemed so fresh - the expectation is that they’ve usually gone all sweaty and soggy from packing and delivering. But these were just a little dry and hard to get down. Although nothing a dollop of gloopy, ultra red sweet and sour sauce dip didn’t solve! Ever see those films where someone has to coat their mouth with olive oil to suck out the venom from a snake bite (if you’re not sure, watch Snakes On A Plane and thank me later)? Well I reckon I’ll just walk around with a tub of this sweet and sour sauce - nothings penetrating that coating! I’ll be the Mick Dundee of Shropshire! Anyway, the chips! I think Lee Fung House still holds the chip award!
Egg Foo Yung was a new dish to us and something we discovered early in this project. A big eggy omelette/frittata thing packed with your choice from the usual suspects off a Chinese takeaway menu. They usually arrive in a big chunk, but this one was cut into smaller pieces. I have no idea what is the traditional way they are served but the cut up chunks are definitely easier to eat. So it’s nice to feel like Tim Tim have thought about the customer experience and gone with that option. A small amount of extra work in the kitchen can sometimes make all the difference to peoples eating experience.
The crispy beef was almost bizarrely crispy. In a good way. Although part of me is also let down a little when you don’t get the traditional stodge you expect. The nostalgic stodge that gives you a big comforting hug and a huge bout of indigestion! The beef was coated in what looked like the radioactive sweet and sour sauce so at least there was some indigestion on it’s way. Glowing red, ‘absolute’ indigestion!
The real business end for me will always be the curry and the curry sauce. I love the stuff! Oscar’s curry sauce was a real revelation and totally unexpected so the curry bar is high. Tim Tim’s was good. It was tasty. Well seasoned but just lacked a little bit of peppery punch for me. I just wanted a tiny bit more from it. But I was the only one. Everyone else thought it was stunning. My wife is the only other consistent factor in all these tastings and she felt like it was the best we had had so far. Either way, it’s really good! And it went down a storm with a negroni!
The most special mention for me on this menu has to be the veg. The absolute freshest, best cooked veg so far. Bright coloured, well seasoned. I wished the veg on every one of these takeaways was cooked like this. It’s no exaggeration when I say it tasted like it had been served straight out of the wok. Like it hadn’t been packed and sent across town - that takes some seriously good cooking and skill! Maybe we were lucky, we ordered early as soon as they opened. Maybe a little later when the rush was on, it might have been a different story. But those are the kind of maybes I don’t want to think about. What we had was utterly delicious!
This was the most consistently good food we have had across all the dishes ordered. Delivered quickly, hot and super fresh, I can absolutely see why Tim Tim is a firm favourite with people and why it was so highly recommended. Even cold the next day, it all fully delivered on flavour. Apart from that sweet and sour dip that when cold set like hard jam - not even spreadable! The portions were great and price wise it was really, really good value for money. You might say ‘absolute’ value for money. The dishes were all really well priced. I wish I had spent more time noting down individual pricing to compare. Maybe that’s a mission before the next chapter of this story. I have all the menus so shouldn’t be too much of a problem! And will help distract me from trying to answer by own ‘absolute sex’ conundrum.
Tim Tim just about lived up to expectations. I won’t say ‘absolutely all’ expectations but that is just because I am still yet to work out if it was ‘absolute’ sex and what even ‘absolute’ sex is, if it even exists! I suppose one way to find out will be to order again and we definitely will - right after we have eaten the other 10 or so takeaways left to try on this totally unnecessary and never ending road!
