Category: restaurant

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Okay Frankie, not too bad, this time

The last time I went to Frankie and Benny’s I wasn’t that impressed with my Calamari Salad. I decided back then that if I had a choice then I probably wouldn’t choose them as a place to eat. However having been invited out to a family dinner, I found myself once more sitting down and looking at the menu in Frankie and Benny’s.

To be honest I did quite like the idea of a salad with calamari, but remembering my last experience I thought that wouldn’t be such a good idea.

In the end looking over the whole of the menu, I went with the special menu with two courses for £10.95, which is available every day except Saturday.

For my starter I went with the chicken wings: Buffalo Chicken Wings – Large chicken wings tossed in Louisiana hot sauce. Served with a blue cheese dip and crunchy celery sticks.

Buffalo Chicken Wings - Large chicken wings tossed in Louisiana hot sauce. Served with a blue cheese dip and crunchy celery sticks

You got four half wings that were pre-cooked, heated up and then covered in some weird very hot spicy orange sauce. I wouldn’t have called the wings I got as “large”. As for the blue cheese dip, I went without, not a fan of that. As for celery, well I have never seen the point of celery, really don’t like and yes I have tried and I really really don’t like it. I do like chicken wings, which is why I ordered this dish.

I thought the orange sauce was a little too hot and spicy, so much so that it overpowered the flavour of the chicken. For me spicy is nice, but it should complement and enhance the flavour of the food it accompanies, not overwhelm it. If that is what it does, just eat the sauce on its own.

For my main, I did think long and hard and in the end went with a burger. New Yorker Burger – Our 6oz grilled hamburger topped with BBQ sauce, pepper jack cheese, mayo and bacon, piled high with Cos lettuce and fresh tomato in a toasted sesame seed bun. Served with house fries and tomato-chilli relish on the side.

New Yorker Burger - Our 6oz grilled hamburger topped with BBQ sauce, pepper jack cheese, mayo and bacon, piled high with Cos lettuce and fresh tomato in a toasted sesame seed bun. Served with house fries and tomato-chilli relish on the side.

I forgot to ask for salad so got fries instead. The cheese was very gloopy and sticky, but the burger itself was actually very nice and full of flavour. I love the description of “piled high” as there was one lettuce leaf and one slice of tomato. I wonder if they really think that is piled high!

As I didn’t eat all the fries I did decide to have a pudding. with the £10.95 menu you can have a pudding from a selected range for just £2.25 which seemed a lot more reasonable than the cost of puddings from the main menu. As is the case with puddings from Frankie’s it will either be a constructed ice cream style desert or something heated with ice cream. I went with the Hot Chocolate Waffle – A warm cinnamon waffle topped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream, smothered in chocolate sauce and topped with crunchy honeycomb.

Hot Chocolate Waffle - A warm cinnamon waffle topped with two scoops of vanilla ice cream, smothered in chocolate sauce and topped with crunchy honeycomb.

It was to be honest what I expected, a warmed pre-cooked waffle with ice cream and chocolate sauce, though not enough honeycomb. It was nice, though quite sweet. I should have ordered a black coffee to go with it to offset that sweetness, actually a black tea would have been nice. Something I learnt many years ago was how nice black tea is with very sweet puddings.

Overall I enjoyed my meal, I think my very low expectations were a big factor in that, I wasn’t expecting high cuisine, sophisticated and lever cooking. What I got was typical chain cooking and it was okay.

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Don’t overcook the squid!

A recent birthday treat was to go to the new Frankie and Benny’s in Weston-super-Mare. As it was lunchtime, I went for the lunchtime menu special, which seemed reasonable value. For my starter I went with the Bruschetta, a homemade mix of fresh tomato, red onion, basil, olive oil and cracked black pepper served over toasted garlic ciabatta bread, finished with a balsamic glaze. I was not that impressed with this, I found the red onion very harsh and astringent. Normally red onion can be very sweet when raw, however I didn’t enjoy this as much as I thought I would.

The Calamari Caesar Salad came next, which consisted of (according to the menu) lightly fried and seasoned calamari, crispy Cos lettuce leaves, white anchovy, tomato and fresh garlic ciabatta croutons drizzled with our Caesar dressing, topped with Grana Padano and served with a wedge of lemon.

Calamari Caesar Salad

I would probably take exception to the phrase “lightly fried” as the squid had been overcooked to the point where the calamari was crunchy on the outside and quite rubbery on the inside. It wasn’t unpleasant, but I do think that Frankie and Benny’s could do a much better job of cooking the squid. It’s not difficult to cook squid well, however I think that the squid at Frankie and Benny’s is double cooked, it is cooked already and then cooked again when it is ordered. I of course don’t know that for sure. The chef has used the larger outside leaves of the Cos lettuce for the dish, which meant they were more limp than crispy. Overall I did enjoy the salad and it was a good sized portion and value for money.

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Fish and Chips at the Seagull Café

There is something classic and very British about having fish and chips at a seaside resort. Down in Weymouth for the day and wanting a late lunch (or was it an early tea) made the decision to have fish and chips.

After walking around for a while decided to go to the Seagull Cafe on the harbourside which had tables and chairs outside. This was a really nice place to sit, watching the world go by, enjoying (that rare thing) a sunny summer afternoon.

Fish and Chips at the Seagull Café

Looking over the traditional menu, I found that they did deep fried mackerel and chip, so I went with that. After a short wait it arrived. The fish was wonderful, you could tell it had just been cooked to order, fresh crispy batter and perfectly done fish. Really lovely. The chips were okay, but they tasted as though they had been cooked a bit of time before and kept warm. Still nice though.

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La Tasca, no hay amor más

Though my plan to celebrate my anniversary with dinner at the Second Floor Bristol, in Harvey Nichols was scuppered by my wife who decided no matter how nice the restaurant looked and how interesting the menu, she didn’t want to have a celebrationary dinner in an upmarket BHS or Primark! Anyway the Second Floor Bristol is a really stupid name for a restaurant. Okay so it’s on the second floor, I get that. It’s in Bristol, I get that. Why though is it named after where it is? Are they so confident about the food and the location, that they don’t think it needs a proper name? Well after my wife turned down this choice of mine, I needed to choose somewhere else.

So having to make a quick decision, I decided on La Tasca. My last few visits have been okay and I do like tapas. The end result wasn’t as good as I remember and certainly I don’t think we’ll go again. It wasn’t awful, it was just okay, nothing special and I do think that the restaurant could have done a lot better.

As it was a Sunday they had their Foolish Feast special, so we went with that. I chose that, partly to be cost effective, but in the main it was easy. I almost laughed at the photograph on the back of the menu, which appeared to be of an authentic Spanish tapas bar and thought, now that would be wonderful, however I knew that in reality the stuff we were going to get would be nice, but it wouldn’t be genuine in the way a proper Spanish tapas bar can be. I wonder why now, why we even went in there…

As we discussed the menu, we both realised that a Greek meze place would probably have been a much better choice, but it was late, we had sat down, we had ordered coffee. A bit too late to do anything then.

La Tasca

The special was £14.95 per person. You start off with the Tabla Especial – to share between two Serrano ham, bread and mixed olives, served with an extra-virgin olive oil & sherry vinegar dip.

Good ham, nice olives and measly amount of bread…. really you needed a bit more bread than you got.

The Paella Valenciana ‘La Tasca’ with chicken, Galician mussels, king prawns, squid, lemon wedges, char-grilled aubergine and peppers; could have been so good, but was let down because it was reheated. As a result the rice was stodgy, the squid was chewy, as were the mussels. I can appreciate that it can’t be easy to cook paella for these kinds of menus, however either do it properly or don’t do it all! Reheating paella is not how it is done in Spain. It kinds of puts me off going to La Tasca and ordering a “proper” paella in case that is a reheated dish. The flavour was okay, but the textures let this dish down.

We ordered one of everything and waited for it to arrive.

This is one dish which really you shouldn’t get wrong, it’s a really simple dish. Patatas Bravas is deep fried potato, with spicy tomato sauce. However they did a bit of a botch job. The potato wasn’t crispy enough and some of it was well undercooked too.

I did enjoy the Albóndigas, beef & pork meatballs, in a rich, slow-cooked tomato sauce. They had good texture, nice flavour and a good sauce. Well it was a good sauce until we worked out that it tasted like the tomato sauce in tinned spaghetti hoops!

I also enjoyed the Croquetas de Pollo. These were hand-crumbed with chicken breast and served with roasted garlic mayonnaise. They were crisp on the outside and lovely and soft on the inside. They melted in the mouth and had a really nice flavour.

The Spinach Tortilla, a spinach omelette served with a spicy red pepper tapenade and roasted garlic mayonnaise was okay, but I did feel it lacked flavour.

Apart from been a little too salty, the Pescado Blanco Frito which was deep-fried white fish, in a special-recipe San Miguel batter, served with homemade paprika & roasted garlic mayonnaise and lemon. The batter was crisp and crunchy, but I did feel that the fish needed more natural flavour. You really needed to dip it in the mayonnaise.

As you might expect you couldn’t really mess up the Baby Leaf Green Salad, served with balsamic vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil dressing on the side.

Overall there were some really nice dishes that we had at the table and alas there were some that really didn’t work out very well. I think it might be a while before I go to La Tasca again, I really do need to find a proper local Spanish tapas bar.

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What is it with Nando’s?

Cabot Circus

Why is it so popular? Come on tell me why?

Now I will admit I have never actually been to a Nando’s so couldn’t tell you if it was any good or not.

I recently was in Bristol’s Cabot Circus twice within a week around lunchtime. Though there are a wide range of eating establishments in the area, each time I was there there was a huge queue for the Nando’s. Around 20-30 people queuing outside. At all the other places there were no queues. Doesn’t happen all the time, the Nando’s at Gloucester Quays never seems to have a queue!

So it’s very popular, but I am not sure why?

They do grilled chicken with a hot marinade with side orders.

Would you know if they use fresh raw chicken, or is it pre-cooked and just “flamed” on the grill?

If you are into that Nando’s what is it that makes people queue? Should I try it out? Or not touch it with a barge pole?

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Burger at the Sainsbury Cafe

Whilst getting a quick lunch at the cafe in Sainsbury, what I wanted was off the menu, so needing to make a quick decision I decided to go for a burger.

It came with chips, coleslaw and some salad. The chips were double cooked, which means they were cooked properly, went cold and were cooked again. Places do that because it is quicker and they can get food out faster to the customer. Personally I don’t like it, as the chips can be quite greasy and over cooked.

I did like the fact that they had used real cheese and not the plastic cheese you get on most burgers you can buy from fast food joints. It was quite a nice burger and had a reasonably good flavour. Didn’t think too much of the burger bun though.

Overall it wasn’t that bad, quite nice in fact, however not sure if I would get it again.

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Burrito and a Beer

Needing a quick dinner and not wanting to spend a fortune and wanting to try somewhere different. I decided that it was time to go to Chiquitos. I have been there before, but that was years ago. Not been recently as generally when I go to where my local one is, I have the children with me and they aren’t fans of mexican food (at the moment), we go to Bella Italia or Frankie and Bennys.

As I was on my own, then I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and see what it was like now.

They had a special offer of a burrito and a beer for just £7.99.

Well lets go with that then. I decided to go with the pulled pork option.

Service was really quick and even though I was having the “special offer” I also got the complementary tortilla chips.

The burrito when it arrived, certainly looked interesting.

I am not sure I would have presented it in that way, I think I might have preferred the sour cream, guacamole and salsa to be served separately.

I think I would have also preferred it to be “freshly made” rather than as I think it was, just heated through. I may be wrong on that.

Overall it was very nice and quite tasty. Spicy but not too spicy.

I will probably go back and try something different another time.

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Steak and Fries

After a series of games of ten pin bowling we decided to have a quick lunch at Frankie and Benny’s the chain of American Italian restaurants that you can find across the UK.

I decided to go simple and have the Steak and Fries.

A 6oz* strip sirloin served plain and simple with house fries and a pot of American mustard on the side. Simple but classic!

Lunch

It was as it was described in the menu, a simple steak, cooked to my liking, tender and with some flavour served with house fries.

A simple but classic dish. Maybe next time I should be more adventurous!

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Calamari Fritti

Recently in London I went out for a meal at Ciao Bella in Bloomsbury.

It was rather a crowded noisy typical Italian restaurant that you can find in London and in other cities across the UK. You are when choosing what to eat faced with a typically large varied menu covering a range of Italian cuisine including pizza and pasta.

From personal experience in northern Italy these kinds of restaurants don’t seem to actually exist in Italy. In Italy there are small family run places have smaller menus, fresh food, ever changing and delicious food.

I have been put off going to Italian restaurants in the UK in the main as I have had a couple of bad experiences. I was once at another Italian restaurant in London and I asked for Spaghetti alle Vongole, and what I got was a sauce that was from a jar!

So I glanced over the menu with a little trepidation, knowing that though it might sound nice on the menu, it may not actually be nice. In the end I went with one of my usual choices, the calamari fritti. Regular readers of the blog will know that I am a real fan of squid and it’s almost a benchmark for me on how good a restaurant is. Squid is a relatively simple dish to cook and if a place can’t cook squid properly than what hope is there for any other dish from the place.

It was a good sized portion and despite the dusting of paprika was very nice. It wasn’t rubbery and tasted good. It wasn’t perfect, but I have had a lot worse before.

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Duck Gyoza

You don’t really have starters at Wagamama there are side dishes that arrive when they are ready. Out with friends we ordered a few alongside our main dishes.

Though generally I enjoy most items I have eaten at Wagamama I was less impressed with the deep-fried duck dumplings served with a spicy cherry hoi sin sauce.

Not that they were bad, more for me the dumplings in themselves lacked flavour and the hoi sin sauce was very overpowering. The texture was good and they were crunchy.