Reviewing lunch time food and evening dining in Manchester's city centre
Mister Tum
(16 comments, 30 posts)
Posts by Mister Tum
Take Five, 55 Spring Gardens
03 months ago
by Mister Tum
in Cafe
Jacket Potato with cheese and beans £2.75
Been inspired to write about this lovely place after no less than TWO successful visits.
Really helpful, friendly staff. Good prices for quality food and decent portion sizes. Both times my jacket potato has been nice and hot (chilli and cheese last time – tomatoey and tasty) and barely fit in the box they give you.
All the food is given to take away but you can sit in if you want to, so none of that needless faffing you get at fast food joints about ‘tray or bag’ when you don’t even know if there’s room to sit in yet.
Filling, tasty, well-priced, friendly staff, and they’ve got a carvery too – look forward to trying it next time. Strongly recommended.
McDonalds Breakfast Wrap £2.49
210 months ago
by Mister Tum
in Fast Food Chains
I hate how absolutely fricking convenient it is to get a McDonalds. There’s about one every 5 yards in England anyway, so you can’t spit without hitting one. But on the way into work this morning the bloody gigantic ads everywhere for their damned breakfast wrap sucked the willpower from my brain and before I knew it I was in their ‘restaurant’ on Oxford Street, tapping my foot impatiently at having to wait 10 whole minutes to be glumly served my wrap by staff looking like they’re carrying out an endless sentence of community service. Which, in a manner of speaking, they are.
It’s hard to describe the flavour. There’s a weird mix of the usual McD’s sausage patty (what the hell that’s made of it’s best not to discuss), their plastic cheese, I think maybe a hash brown, something that used to be bacon in a distant past life, a choice of generic Brown or Red sauce, and all this on a tortilla wrap.
The undulating journey your taste buds go on whilst eating one of these things actually causes them to occasionally fall asleep, and you suffer taste black-outs. As though your mouth is not willing to process the insipid combination of ‘flavours’, as it were. It’s a bit like someone else is eating it for you and describing it to you whilst you’re wearing ear-muffs, and standing in another room, with your mouth full of cotton wool. It’s kind of filling, and it lasts longer than you’d expect if you can be bothered chewing it. But, as is usual with SmackDee’s you really come out the other end of the experience a) still hungry, 2) markedly poorer, and D) needing the loo within the hour or so.
Clearly I deserved the experience for going into McDonalds in the first place, so I blame no one but myself. Stupid golden stupid arches…
Dough Pizza Kitchen 75 – 77 High St, Northern Quarter, Manchester
01 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Restaurants
Meatballs Puttanesca £7.55 – “Hand made meatballs with chillis and onions served on a bed of penne pasta in a classic tomato, olive, caper, anchovy and garlic sauce topped with melted mozzarella (you can also ask for dairy free if you’re so inclined)”
Eight of us decided to try this place for a lunchtime birthday celebration. Eight people stood in their doorway politely waiting to be seated. Despite booking our table ahead of time, it took staff about 10 minutes to notice us. They were dealing with maybe 4 other tables of customers, max.
When we were finally seated my initial dish of choice was a classic spicy chicken pizza as I wanted to try the intriguing and unique “wholemeal base” that their menu highlights. Healthy pizzas? Surely not! I was quickly disappointed when they promptly informed me that they did not have any wholemeal bases at all.
I don’t know what the other tables had ordered (Mermaid’s Tit on Toast maybe?) but it took the best part of an hour for our food to arrive. Make sure you have a few hours to spare if you ever hit Dough as a quick lunchtime visit is not recommended.
When at last it came, the food was delivered by smiling but unapologetic staff, and all 8 orders were provided at roughly the same time. The meatballs were quite tasty, the mozzarella generous and thick. The sauce was interesting, an unusual and pleasant combination of flavours. The pasta wasn’t great, it had the plastic rubberiness of microwave meals but the whole dish was plentiful and filling. I shared a garlic bread and was glad I didn’t order a whole one for myself. It was dry and slightly stale, to moisten it we had to baste it in garlic butter which we robbed from someone else’s salad.
Manchester offers a plethora of Italian restaurants and you’d think this healthy competition would keep restaurateurs on their toes. But the prevailing attitude seems to be much like the curry mile in Rusholme: if we sell it they will come anyway.
Interestingly, dairy free and gluten free diets are catered for so one individual who was ordinarily unable to eat pizzas was delighted at being able to eat a goat’s cheese version. Frankly however, the table’s overall opinion was that we should have just gone to Pizza Express. Eyeballing their menu online had my mouth watering at the possibilities, yet the experience as a whole was a disappointment. There is no excuse for service that slow, there was no apology or concession offered, and the food was good but not outstanding.
THE EATERY – 3 Stevenson Square, Northern Quarter
01 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Cafe
Salmon and cream cheese wholemeal baguette with tomato, black pepper and side salad with peppers £4.05 (eating in).
An innocuous looking sandwichery from the outside nuzzling in the bosom of the Northern Quarter The Eatery is a sandwich shop with a difference: their food is fresh. After gnawing my way around countless stale baguette dispensing cafes, sandwich shops and delis in the city centre here’s one where the staff take pride in their work, and where the food genuinely feels and tastes as fresh as you’d hope.
I don’t often go for salmon and cream cheese – not because I dislike it, just because there’s usually more manly meat further up the menu to grab my attention first. In this case the tasty-looking beef was already bagsied by a certain bagginsy fellow ‘muncher. Still, I quite fancied something slightly different and that wasn’t a jacket potato.
The staff were all smiles as though they were actually happy to see us, another rare occurrence in the food industry. Opting to eat in seems to net you a bonus side salad that I’m not sure you get if you take your food away. In any case it was most welcome and consisted of lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers and, would you believe it, onions. In my experience onions are something city centre salads seem to shy away from, yet which deliver most of the flavour of the salad (you’d never find an onionless salad at Mr Tum’s house). I was ever so slightly miffed that I didn’t get offered a nice Caesar sauce like the rest of the customers, but this kind of thing tends to happen to me so I put it down to my requesting extra peppers and made up for it with salad cream instead.
Recall that sinking feeling as you look through the glass at the cold meat in, say, a certain cafe on York Street, wondering to yourself how many days it’s been out under those lamps? Well, here you can sit back, relax and enjoy the dimly lit, slightly bland but spotlessly clean environs. The salmon was moist and succulent, the cream cheese spread generously but not overwhelming, the salad unsullied and clean tasting, and the bread was fresh and wholesome. Name one supermarket which can say that about their offerings!
Usually I’d balk at that price for a sandwich, but you know what? After all those crappalata sarnies I’ve eaten in Manchester it was finally worth it to invest a little extra and just calm down and actually enjoy the meal. Great stuff, good recommendation, I’d go back in a jiffy.
ALDI, Market Street
01 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Food Shops
Chicken Salad Sandwich 99p
There must have been an altruistic psychic making sandwiches on the factory line for Aldi this morning. Knowing that a purchase from their paltry sandwich selection usually leads me inexorably into a mental battle with suicidal impulses this humane telepath clearly lent a generous hand in the preparation of the unusually agreeable ingredients.
Normally with a cheap-ass ALDI chicken/ham/bacon/insert-meat-here sandwich there is an almost profound abundance of salty sandy dryness, to the near exclusion of filling and sauce. This experience of painful aridity, akin to chewing on a used sandal, is what usually triggers my downward spiralling thoughts of permanent self-harm. In this instance, my unnamed guardian spotted this sad potential and sought to assuage my aching soul and rumbling stomach.
Resigning myself to the barren flavours but undeniable affordability of the meek chicken sandwich I tucked in, inconsolable tears of resignation threatening to flood my eyes, when suddenly my endorphins kicked in, seizing upon the slightest thread of zest and throttling the essence from it with every ounce of strength in my otherwise resource-depleted brain. Clawing back positivity from the black abysses of blandworld, it was like travelling the long savoury road to redemption via the medium of chewing.
Your mileage may vary, and this experience was particularly circumstantial, borne of impecunious financial standing and boosted by unexpected fervour responding to the natural elation of dodging suicide. But next time I’m staggering along Market Street screaming at the skies for inspiration and weeping at strangers to give me direction to food, I know I’ll be able to drag myself to the realisation that: the ALDI over there? It aint so bad. And thank goodness for their psychic staff…
Don Giovannis Restaurant, Oxford Street
01 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Restaurants
Lasagne, garlic bread starter + drink £15
I’m beginning to suspect that I only like Italian food if it’s home cooked. And by that I mean cooked at my home. By me. Every Italian restaurant I go to seems to make a lame effort with their flavours. So in visiting Don Giovannis restaurant I thought I’d give them a chance and order a relatively infallibly classic from their lunch menu: the good old lasagne.
It was a birthday celebration and there were many of us out, so let me include the caveat that many people enjoyed their various meals and a good time was had by all. But far be it from me to allow that kind of joviality and good time-having to get in the way of an opportunity to munch and rant.
Quite simply, the lasagne was too cheesy and soupy. It was piping hot, which is fair – although I did have to wait approximately 18 hours for it to cool down to a human-consumable temperature. But the rich textures of beef, cheese and pasta were quite literally drowned by cheese and tomato soup. The meal was rapidly losing structural stability and sinking slowly into the ocean of orangey waves.
Some people may go for this. Some may even purport that this is what lasagne is all about, that it is basically a soup dish with hints of meat and cheese hidden within the tomatoey mush. Not I. Furthermore, anticipation of potential blandness drawn from experience with my previous visit to Don’s led me to timidly petition a trace of garlic to be added to my dish. Perhaps I should have overstated my case as if any trace was actually added, it went undetectably by.
Nevertheless, the bathrooms were clean and spotless – an excellent method of determining the quality of a restaurant – various other dishes were enjoyed around the table, certainly tasting some led me to determine which dish to try next time, the staff were friendly and accommodating and seamlessly covered up an order gaffe by telling us the first two incorrect garlic breads were “on the house”. The location is bustling yet accessible and there were many smiling faces at the end of the meal.
I look forward to another visit but also to choosing a different meal…
Marks & Spencer, Piccadilly Gardens
01 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Food Shops
Ham/egg/potato/tomato salad – 2 for £3
So, clearly these are fair portions designed to assist those looking earnestly to lose weight. However, at that price point, and with my girth, it clearly becomes a case of combining two options together to make a passable portion-sized salad.
Gotta say this upfront: I’ve had these salads for two days running now. Get an egg+potato salad and a ham+egg salad and you’ve got a really decent meal right there. Comes with a pretty standard but tasty salad cream – actually about four times as much as you could feasibly need, unless you particularly enjoy, say, physically bathing in the stuff.
So yes, so what, I’ve had 4 salads for 2 lunches in 2 days. I completely undermined any sense of eating to lose weight, like Homer in the Blisstonia episode when he eats so much will-sapping gruel that he doesn’t actually lose any will at all.
Why the salads all of a sudden? Well, aside from the utter tedium of gnawing through 20 cubic metres of lettuce – weighing in at about a total 1 gram of lettuce – the rest of the stuff is actually good. (Well, a good accompaniment to say, a big burger). Fresh tomatoes, cucumber, onions, eggs, potatoes, ham and the aforementioned vast quantity of lettuce.
And, for once living up to Marks and Sparks’ claims about being not just food this goes beyond the typical last-week’s-leftovers you might be fortunate enough to stumble across at the Gabattoire for example. All in all, if you’re a bloke you’ll be looking at two of these at a reasonable price for a pretty solid, semi-healthy lunch. For once you won’t have to charge into the fountains in Piccadilly Gardens loudly decrying your own very existence, weeping tears of utter defeat at the futility of having to choose what to have for lunch for the 50,000th time and having absolutely no answers at hand.
Incidentally, M&S, bring back Dervla Kerwan, we miss her!
Rustica, Hilton Street, Manchester
11 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Cafe
Bacon, sausage and egg on brown Frisbee with red sauce (or Tomato Ketchup as some of us are wont to call it) £2.60
Time to settle the score on where the Friday breakfast of choice is at in city centre en ce moment. “Fives” some people say, “Don Giovannis” others mutter, “that place on High Street” others whisper. Well, they’re all wrong. In terms of sheer overwhelming enthusiasm – admittedly not always matched by order-accuracy – you simply cannot beat Rustica on Hilton Street. Free delivery for orders over a tenner if you manage to guilt your work-mates into sharing a greasy hangover-sponge breakie with you and you just can’t be arsed walking.
And it comes, not in a barm, a bap, a baguette or a bloomer, but in a giant fricking Frisbee. Yes, it will make you suspect dubious cardiac activity as you work your way through it. Yes, they do sometimes get the sauce wrong, or put so little on that you have to stock up on your own bottle of TK to restore balance to the Sauce-Force. Yes, they are sometimes a bit cheeky about having to walk all this way on a Friday whilst they’re so busy. But hey, this is all part of the friendly banter and great customer service that you come to expect from your friendly neighbourhood Rustica.
The food is plentiful, cooked, hot, comes in a foil wrap to keep it fresh, it’s also cheap for what it is when compared to the rest of the city centre market, and it is satisfying to the extreme. If you don’t enjoy getting the meat-sweats from this giant Frisbee and having to gulp down a cup of steaming hot tea to aid you in soaking up the 6 or 7 kilos of raw salt that this dish brings as standard, then you might as well just go and eat corn flakes for the rest of your boring life.
Subway, Mosley Street
01 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Fast Food Chains
Thursday 6” Sub of the Day: BMT on Herb & Cheese £2.29.
Subway. Started out so well, sunk so low. Remember when the Sub of the Day was £1.79? Remember the days when they used to give out rewards (buy six get one free)? Or when they used to make it in their words “how you like it”? Now it’s more like “how we like you to have it“, i.e. with little to no filling whatsoever. Also, they take every single opportunity to up-sell you more and more. They honestly put McDonalds to shame for this. I’m pretty sure Subway would happily ask if you wanted to supersize given half the chance.
I’ve been to Subway a shamefully substantial amount of times over the years and here’s what I’ve learned:
- Do not experiment with anything on the menu as it isn’t worth the effort – stick to what you know
- Sub of the Day is the only reason to go, otherwise you might as well sink your cash into something worthwhile and go and have a ‘proper’ lunch
- The quantity of filling you receive is inversely proportional to the number of years/months/weeks that this store has been operating
- The cost of your sub = [x+20p], where ‘x’ is equal to the number of Subway subs you have consumed to date (e.g. my Subs cost approximately £16,864.00 these days)
- The length of your rage fuse is equal to your starting fuse (let’s call this ‘n’) divided by ‘y’, where ‘y’ is equivalent to the number of questions you are asked by the idiotically titled “sandwich artists” as you move along the line trying to prise your lunch from the collective artists’ grasping clutches
This is how I’d like the transaction to go:
‘6” BMT on herb & cheese with everything but olives, please.’
‘£1.79, please, sir.’
‘Thanks, bye.’
Here’s how it actually goes:
‘6” BMT on herb & cheese with everything but olives, please.’
‘Which bread?’
‘Herb & cheese, please’
‘Double cheese for extra 50p?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Toaster for extra 60p?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Extra salad for extra 70p?’
‘No, thanks anyway.’
‘Double it up for an extra £5?’
‘Please: no, thank you so much.’
‘Cookie with that for extra £17?’
‘No, just, no.’
‘Drink with that for extra £100?’
‘NO.’
‘Anything else with that for an extra -’
‘For the love of God, just GIVE ME MY DAMNED SANDWICH!!’
Actually, that extract is heavily edited for brevity. Anyway, you finally get your sandwich and tuck in, and you know what? It’s just not very good.
SubWAY? More like SubPAR.
PS. Anyone know what BMT stands for? (My unimaginative guess would be Bad Meaty Tripe . . .)
Pizza Express, Peter Street
01 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Restaurants
Garlic bread with mozzarella £3.20, sloppy Giuseppe £8.60, chocolate fudge cake £4.65
Calamari al forno £4.95, Siciliana £8.60, toffee fudge glory gelato £4.80
In a desperate bid to escape eating Mrs Tum’s kipper quiche leftovers for the fourth time this week I surprised her with a romantic dinner for two at Pizza Express (the spontaneity of the gesture having nothing to do with the 2-for-1 voucher burning a hole in my wallet). Despite the best part of the restaurant being completely empty we were hustled into a corner about 8-ft square along with six or so other couples.
I managed to find my old favourite on the new menu of garlic bread with mozzarella which was perfectly tasty although slightly stingy with the mozzarella. Had I wanted so much plain dough I would have ordered the dough-balls. Mrs Tum, revelling in her first night out in a long, long time, plumped for the calamari al forno. She was less than impressed with the offering of three squid rings cut into halves and served in soggy breadcrumbs on a slate plate which looked like a fallen roof tile!
For the main course my Sloppy Giuseppe and Mrs Tum’s Siciliana pizzas were served by a friendly waiter. My dish was spicy and loaded with meat and cheese and Mrs Tum’s was smothered in toppings and steaming hot. I was ambitiously hoping for a moriatum on complaints about Mrs Tum’s first course only to become instantly aghast at the sight of flies buzzing round Mrs Tum’s lacquered hair and finely-pressed Chanel suit. Needless to say Mrs Tum’s fly-swatting, flailing arms suggested severe annoyance and all hopes of an unprecedented, energetic finale to the evening were slowly fading before my eyes. Admitting defeat, I consoled myself with a chocolate fudge cake. Predictably, it was stunningly average . . .
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