Mmm, pizza

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So I've just had a delightful Italian meal.

Hmm.

OK, so I've just had a mediocre pizza.

I'd like to point out that, much as I despise the way people go abroad and then just eat the food they eat at home, it is months since I had any Italian food.

Also in my defence, the food here is getting decidedly monotonous. Central Asian cuisine is frozen in time, a time when they invented a fifth dish and ran out of fingers. There's not even much variation in the way each dish is made. Outside the capital cities it can be hard to track down anything else to break out of the rut.

So I've been rotating them. But there comes a time when you have to try and branch out, so you hunt down whatever other option there is. Last night's attempt involved ordering something called 'Thai chicken'. I waited in hopeful anticipation for some spice, since the local cuisine is almost entirely bland. Finally the dish arrived (after so long that I thought they'd sent someone off to fetch it from Thailand by pony), and it turned out to be that well-known Thai dish of chicken topped with tinned mushrooms, smoked ham, tomato and melted cheese and no seasoning whatsoever.

So tonight I set off for dinner again. I was almost tempted to return to the same restaurant to see what 'Arabic chicken' might be. I say "almost tempted" in the same sense that I was almost tempted to stick a fork in my eye; so instead I headed for what Lonely Planet described as "a promising Italian restaurant looks set to open its doors" - i.e. they hadn't tried it.

I hoped that perhaps I might find a row of cosmopolitan restaurants on my way, although that hope only accounted for about 1%!o(MISSING)f perceived reality, the rest populated by the sad realisation that all that lay between me and the promising Italian restaurant was half a mile of concrete buildings so hideous that they'd fit in nicely in Swindon. People hardly ever eat out here, not surprisingly given what they can get if they do, so restaurants are few and far between.

I arrived at the restaurant to find they'd done an admirable job of imitating the naff decor of Italian restaurants elsewhere in the world (outside Italy, of course). The menu? The first thing I spotted was 'Arabic chicken'. The rest was about as Italian as chicken kiev, other than some spaghetti dishes that I didn't dare order. A separate leaflet listed the pizzas; so on that I settled. The end result - edible, but a bit crap.

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