After an evening of refreshments, we were traipsing wearily back to go to the Arches or Effes, but something drew me towards Ritas - so we did a complete U-turn and marched a good 300-400 yards back down the road to go to this fine establishment. It suffers from being situated in Stokes Croft, the quality of the other establishments there leave much to be desired, plus for some reason I had always assumed it was a Carribean takeaway of sorts: a large lady called Rita at the helm serving up curry goat and dumplings; the reality dissapointed me. Instead of this homely scene, it houses two enourmous top-heavy skewers (indicating hand-carving, a significant plus however) and an army of 6 or 7 sweaty reasonably surly men. When I say sweaty, they were dripping with visible beads of sweat, trickling slowly down their brows. We ordered a small doner, a burger (for the ladyfriend) and chips. A battered sausage was also hastily added, quite pointlessly, to the order as it looked appealing sitting in the warming tray. God himself only knows why. Immediately I was confused - as a kebab eater, I was hurried towards the far end where salad and sauce was applied. This left my companion stranded - did we wait for the burger separately or would they let us know? They should make it far more clear.
I was about third in line. I like it this way, you get to see the whole process unfold but not so many times that it becomes dull and repetetive. The two gents in front of me were quite amusing, they seemed to have an odd bravado that only revealed itself when adding salad. "Yeah, pile it on mate, loads of onions and lettuce". They ended up with a ridiculous mountain of useless veg, how foolhardy. I ordered lettuce and garlic sauce (no cucumber, this has happenned before and it was OK, so I wasn't overly upset). This was skilfully wrapped - I like it like this rather than in a standard issue polystyrene box - they put a sweet little greaseproof paper circle on top and wrapped it up like a parcel.
We hurried home. The kebab was delightful, they didn't fall into the trap that the Grecian did with the hand-carving as the strips were slender and juicy. The lettuce was very finely sliced indeed, and watery to boot which combined with the sauce into what resembled creamed leeks or similar - this actually complemented it quite nicely. The pitta was opened in an unusual fashion, a slice in the centre of the oval which meant it essentially became a plate rather than a sandwich - I suppose their thinking is you can have fun stuffing the meat into it. I certainly did. I didn't actually finish the kebab, but that was more due to the contraints of the drinking than anything else. Although on reflection I did have a side order of chips. This I decided was a pointless addition to a kebab experience, I shall not do this in future.
At this point I might point out that I did have an Arches kebab a week before this. It was so lacklustre, so bog standardly delicious that I felt it warranted only a footnote. It was quickly and impeccably constructed by the young pretender - I even finished it. The pitta was soft, the meat was melt in the mouth and melded beautifully with the garlic sauce, lettuce and cucumber. Dissapointingly fantastic.
