I was attending a belated Christmas meal at the Brunello Lounge on the seafront at Weston-super-Mare.
I planned to park in Carlton Street. There was a long queue due to roadworks by the Town Hall, I popped by the station and managed to bypass the queue. However, upon entering the car par, I found the council had closed the upper levels and the rest of the spaces were filled. A conversation later I found out that there had been some anti-social behaviour on the upper levels of the car park, so as a result the council had closed them. Not sure how that encourages people to go out in the evening in Weston, if it’s challenging to park
I headed to the Sovereign Centre and parked there instead, which cost me three times as much.
We had booked a table, which was great as the place was super busy.
As it was January, we didn’t have access to the festive menu, so we had to make do with the regular menu. There is a wide choice on the menu, but if you exclude the brunch and breakfast items, and the sandwiches, there are a few main course items and a range of burgers.
I wanted the Rose’s Truffle Chicken, pulled chicken breast in a creamy truffle & mushroom sauce, with crispy bacon, fried potatoes, veggie parmesan and parsley, served with tenderstem broccoli. However, that wasn’t available. My second choice was the beef brisket burger, but that also wasn’t available. So, in the end I went with the Bang Bang Chicken. This was buttermilk fried chicken with noodles, pak choi, tenderstem broccoli, mushrooms and sugar snap peas topped with bang bang coconut sauce, sesame seeds and chilli.
It was busy, and we were a large group, but I didn’t think it took too long for the food to arrive, I certainly wasn’t made to feel I was waiting. The dish actually looked rather good.
However, I had anticipated that the fried chicken element would be fried chicken pieces. What I got was sliced buttermilk chicken steak on the bed of noodles and vegetables.
There was a fair amount of chilli in the dish as well, I don’t mind some heat, but there was a little too much for me, luckily it had been sliced quite thinly and not chopped, so was easy to remove some of the chilli from the dish.
I did enjoy the food, but it wasn’t amazing, and I felt it could be much better. Looking over the menu, it would appear that there are quite a few menu items there that are based on the buttermilk chicken. Would I have the dish again, probably not.