Time for Deliverance

We have not stocked up yet. There are no cans of baked beans in the kitchen cupboard and I don't fancy the one tin of sardines there which displays and describes the fish as being preserved in mustard sauce, surely a disobliging end for sardines.

If duct tape resembles the shiny, brown, sticky stuff you secure parcels with, I can lay my hands on a roll of that, but so far preparations for a siege have amounted to picking up the phone and ordering food from a company called DELIVERANCE which happened to send its brochure last week.

No logic here, since, come the chemical attacks, Deliverance motorcyclists will not want to be gallantly speeding around London with boxes of pad Thai and Peking duck spring rolls and envelopes of naan bread.

But until such a time, the good news is that Deliverance has just opened a third kitchen in White City, thereby extending their service to include all of zone one and nearly all of zone two.

The company, established in 1997, differs from most take-out operations in that the food, which encompasses five cuisines, is prepared in its own kitchens. In the brochure they describe a working day which apparently starts at 6am with Roman and Ivan (thank the lord for asylumseekers) beginning to chop vegetables while Linda and Lisa wash salad leaves.

At 1pm Andy arrives and starts squeezing oranges and lemons and juicing carrots, apples and other fresh fruit. More chefs show up at 3pm. So far, so like a restaurant, but how does the food compare?

Pretty much a novice, almost a virgin, when it comes to preprepared food other than that innocently encountered in restaurants, I made the mistake
of ordering too many dishes of different nationalities. I had encouraged my friends each to pick a cuisine, which resulted in a delivery of Chinese, Thai, Indian and European parcels.

Each box or sealed plastic tray is generously filled, making any item enough in quantity to satisfy-two. We had twice as much food as we could handle. Practical problems of unwrapping, decanting, reheating - dishes are delivered hot but many need boosting by a blast in the oven or a whirl in the microwave - resulted in a disjointed meal that was also variable in quality and appeal.

As with airline food, the best survivor of the sealed-and-reheated package is Indian food. In the lamb Madras, Goan chicken curry and tarka dhal the individual spicing was readily discernible and the meat was of high quality.

Basmati rice was fragrant and beautifully cooked. Onion bhaji and the irresistibly named lamb Tendulkar - spiced lamb stuffed with mozzarella, breadcrumbed and deep-fried - fared less well from being trapped in a box.