Camel One

In my thoughts I do not think there is anything wrong with eating a kebab while sober, but Caucasians are square and the looks they fire your way when you roll down the street munching on charcoaled meat would never be shot if you were eating a sober-friendly falafel wrap. For the last few years I have held a belief based on my drunken appetite that Camel One, situated on Jewellery Mile, would be a tasty kebab while sober. This belief was based in alcohol consumption and the dozens of kebabs that I have drunkenly eaten on my way home that I am guaranteed to spill the chilli sauce down the front of my jeans or piss my pants.

Camel One’s kebabs do not divert too far from the usual kebab houses where you can buy a £3 kebab, but in my head I have elevated it above everywhere else. It became my regular kebab haunt in second year of university when I lived in Longsight and would make a lengthy detour to buy a decent kebab rather than risk buying food from one of the dodgy takeaways on Dickinson Road or steal my flatmates Sainsbury’s chorizo slices.

Camel One serves more than just kebabs, with a selection of the usual finger food and an interesting menu of curries that I have never tasted. But one thing I do know is that the donner kebab is from a different mother than the stock donner served across England. It is a questionable ruby red coloured meat that is really dry but satisfies a need when bladdered. Tonight I ordered the chicken kebab that was charcoaled over coals for ten minutes and served with salad, minted yogurt and chilli sauce. The anticipation was crushing me as I walked to my table, I took my first (sober) bite of Camel One’s chicken kebab and wow, it tasted like a chicken kebab.

What had I been playing at? I had deluded myself, I had actually listened to a theory that I thought up while pissed. No disrespect to Camel One but it tasted like a normal chicken kebab. On the Curry Mile Al Quds and Caspian remain the two best kebab houses in terms of flavour, but Camel One will continue to be my first port of call for when I am drunk and hungry.