Reviewing lunch time food and evening dining in Manchester's city centre
Mister Tum
(16 comments, 30 posts)
Posts by Mister Tum
Tesco, Market Street
02 years ago
by Mister Tum
in Food Shops
Tesco Balti Wrap + crisps and diet coke for £2 (meal deal)
Tastes like a dying man vomited into a paper bag, wrapped it in cellophane, posted it into an elephant’s guts wherein it was rapidly passed through into an open sewer grate, washed out into a cess pool, fished out by a rabid zombie, fed to a barrel of scabby rats, re-constituted from their collective waste, rolled into a tortilla wrap, conveyed through a Tesco wrapping factory and then farted into your mouth by a particularly angry and incontinent, leprosy-riddled bear.
Marks & Spencer, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
12 years ago
by Mister Tum
in Food Shops
“Your 5 A Day” meal, £4
Carrot and cucumber slices, nuts and raisins, some inedible humous and a curious cranberry (?) jam-type substance for £4. Some readers might think that this alone cannot amount to an entire meal. And you’d be right. Where is the meat product, for example? What do you mean, there is no meat? Doesn’t this go against the very tenets of your basic human-meal? Yes. It does.
This package meal seeks to offer absolution from that preternatural worry which we’ve all had marketed into our subconscious brains: have you had your five-a-day? Unless you’re the test subject of some sadistic microbiotic megalomaniac Gillian McKeith-spawn the answer to this question is invariably ‘no’. So, tentatively stepping into the bland and tasteless world of the vegetarian I sought to discover whether or not a longer life meant a better life. For, if one were to dine exclusively on such rabbit food, and if indeed it did prolong life in that one’s insides were eventually purged of the standard 5 lbs of red meat that we all know lie undigested in our guts (thank you Judge Reinhold in Beverley Hills Cop II) – then would this new meatless and thus longer-lasting life be worth actually living?
The short answer is no. And that’s what I’m giving you: the short answer. Suicide would be preferable. The food itself is pretty much fresh and inoffensive, what is offensive is that it doesn’t sit on top of a gigantic sizzling steak. You might think that’s my fault for not ordering a steak and getting the food I wanted rather than a veggie option, but you’d be wrong. The purchase was a direct result of the indelible fear that “5-a-day” marketing has seeded into the darkest parts of our souls.
Detox Retox, Mosley Street, Manchester
102 years ago
by Mister Tum
in Cafe
Moo Pie (steak and red wine sauce) + spring onion mash with gravy £6.55 (£4.90 with 25% opening discount)
The prospect of having just a pie by itself – or as they call it a “Lonely Pie” – was too sorrowful for me to consider, so I opted to ratchet up from £3.50 for a pie, to what would become £6.55 with gravy and a spoonful of Smash mashed potato. How those two ingredients amount to £3.05 is beyond comprehension. Even with an opening April 25% off promotion this was a costly sum for a fairly modest pie.
It turned out to be rather filling after the fact, but I would definitely skip the mash and gravy if I went back. The pie itself was very tasty: soft luscious pastry, luxurious and sweet red wine sauce, and stringy but generous beef. Apparently they have free wi-fi and newspapers although I was only privy to the glass of free water with lemon, which was still a nice touch.
They’re kind of putting all their pies in one basket however, because aside from pies, they also do sandwiches and salads, but not much else, despite having hot food capabilities. Having no real pastry-based competition in the city (sod off with your Greggs) maybe they think that this is enough.
The place kind of looks like a cross between a cafe/deli and a restaurant (with 4 tables, a mirror and minimalist ornamentation) and dining inside is a little unsettling because of the sparseness. And the menu is a little difficult to decipher, hence my getting stung for mash and gravy. Also, with only 4 inexperienced staff and about half that number in customers during lunch hour it doesn’t look like this place will be around for long. So if you feel the urge to try an unusually tasty pie in the city centre, look no further for a high-priced treat and get in quick. But if you’re looking for a heartier meal at a more reasonable price, the search goes on.
NB. At least one cow was terminally harmed at some stage during the making of this review.
Cafe Lloyd, 16 Lloyd Street, Manchester
02 years ago
by Mister Tum
in Cafe
Fish & Chips £4.70
Chish and fips, as you like it. Decent price, beats most other chippies in town for quality and economy and you get a big fat portion that’ll give you a reassuring heart burn for the rest of the afternoon, and will guarantee you a couple of afternoon visits with the Sandman if, for example, you work in a hot, fetid office, and on a day to day basis you feel like a crab being warmed up slowly in a pan of gradually boiling water.
Recommended for sunny summer days, get them chips out into Albert Square and try to enjoy them on one of Manchester’s lovely benches whilst avoiding being molested by the copious flocks of filthy sky-rats that plague city centre.
What do you mean, ‘that’s a pretty short review’? It’s fish and chips, what’s more to say? If they were no good I’d tell you, but they get the job done, okay? Alright?? And if you don’t like fish and chips you can go back to Europe and shove your French fries where the sun probably shines a lot more than it does in Manchester . . .
Grand Buffet, 48/50 Withworth Street, Manchester
12 years ago
Curry buffet – All You Can Eat/Eat All You Can for £8, includes refillable soft drink.
Curry, unlike say, Chinese food (or a platter of chicken drumsticks) does not lend itself well to the whole Scoff What You Can buffet deal. Reason being you reach your curry-consumption limit by filling up an awful lot quicker than you do when topping off your duck pancakes with rice + noodles + more rice + more noodles all smothered with miscellaneous meats and sauces. Which is odd, because they’re very similar dishes in theory. Meat, sauce, rice. Maybe it’s the spiciness of curry that brings you to a halt faster.
I found myself deep into my third plate of curry buffet when, embarrassingly, my body came to a complete stop and I was no longer able to feed. The curry sweats intensified as I briefly considered the possibility of me suffering a minor stroke there and then. Eventually I realised I was undergoing the curious condition of being “full”, whilst still having food on my plate. My “raised-in-the-80s” instincts kicked in as I thought of all the starving children in Africa and I anxiously endeavoured to at least finish all the meat remaining on my plate, but to no avail.
The food itself was actually good quality for a buffet, freshly made, loads of choice, all the old favourites: tasty chicken tikka massala, potent madras, beef and lamb dishes, veggie options, rices, naans, for some reason onion rings, poppadum-preaches, the works. Also included was the option to run along the drinks machine topping your beverage up with ginger ale, irn bru, coke, sprite and everything else into one eye-watering glass of George’s Marvellous Medicine.
The kicker, however, was the price. £8 is far too much for what it is – you can get a nice meal for that in city centre. Maybe Grand Buffet works best as a one-off treat when there’s a few of you wanting a spicy curry fix, or maybe if you’re in the middle of an all day session and need sustenance quick; and with a sort of out-of-the-way cafe ambience, it suffices but doesn’t impress.
Tesco, Market Street, Manchester
02 years ago
by Mister Tum
in Food Shops
£2 Meal Deal – Ploughmans sandwich, Feet & Bunion Walkers crisps + fresh orange
Desperately opting for economy over excellence I found myself succumbing to the towering, evil, earth-dominating behemoth that is the monster named Testico for my daily bread. Looking merely to subsist for a few hours more until the day was done I beseeched the super-powered-market to deliver unto me worldly goods that could sate my ever-growing yearning for nutrition. Well, barely nutrition to be honest, just something, anything, to beat the hunger from my belly.
So approaching the dubiously priced £2 Tesco meal deal with the appropriate amount of trepidation I opened my horribly familiar plastic triangle packet. You might have already spotted my first error: cheese and onion crisps with cheese sandwiches? Trust me, this is as bad in execution as it is in theory.
The Tesco Mind-Wombles emerged upon my first mouthful to discreetly remove all my memories of palette and taste and replace them with a meaningless sliver of mushy, vague recollections of food ingestion that can only be equated in some distant and weird way to the insipidness of the colour grey.
Apparently every 10 pence you spend in the UK goes into Tesco’s pockets already, so whether you want to submit to the blue and red gigantic fiend because “every little helps <you to lose your soul>”, or whether you desperately rage against the abyssal black hordes by purchasing your nourishment elsewhere, either way you, me, everybody, we’re all still little Tesco bitches.
Wings, Cross Street, Manchester
02 years ago
by Mister Tum
in Fast Food Chains
Duck noodle wrap £2.50
Setting my expectations somewhere around the £2.50 price mark (that being the leftover change in my trouser pocket) I meandered into the famously five-star Wings restaurant’s fast-food outlet all a-flutter at the prospect of being able to afford half a pot of aromatic noodles.
Noodles, yeah? With some bits of duck and sauce, right? In a wrap, OK? And that’s it! For £2.50! What’s not to like? Why didn’t I think of it first? Is it because noodles are essentially a variation on bread, and therefore putting them in a wrap is a bit like having a bread sandwich? Maybe. In any case I tell you what: it wasn’t bad. The sauce was pretty surprisingly tasty and the sheer “I’m really eating food here” sensation of filling your gob with noodles in a wrap was quite fun. Till it was over. And it was over fast. It looks like a fairly decent size for what it is. And I suppose it is. But a grown man would need to consume at least two of these to stop himself from going to Quality Save in Piccadilly Gardens immediately afterwards even though lunch time is nearly over just to order 59 pence worth of “37% Chocolate” Chocolate Cookies and scoffing the lot to fill up on whilst his work-mates look on and shake their heads whispering to each other about what a fat git he really is. Just saying is all . . .
I’m drowning in the hoi sin of your lies, so fill me with your noodly goodness.
Marks & Spencer, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
32 years ago
by Mister Tum
in Food Shops
Ploughmans triangle sandwich £2.15
Continuing my senseless pursuit of high class grub-joints in Manchester, I found myself inexplicably browsing the banal triangle sandwich section of Marks & Sparks with the masochistic listlessness of the lost, lovelorn, local working schlep. Still full from a home-made breakfast fry-up I opted for something sacrilegiously meatless and got in on the Ploughmans action. And boy was I whelmed. Neither underwhelmed, nor overwhelmed, just well and truly, utterly whelmed. And the whelming didn’t stop from first mouthful to the last. So uninteresting and lacklustre was the flavour that my mind dropped through some long, dark abysses, far from the light of flavour and zest down into cavernous realms of downright palpable ennui.
What unknown mystical strength brought me through to the end of this arduously monotonous chewing exercise I may never learn, suffice to say that the soul-sapping mediocrity of the experience could only truly by whelmed further (either underwhelmed or overwhelmed) by a stint of self-abusive shelf-gawking down at Aldi. In summary then, as they say on the internet: meh.
This isn’t just food – food it just isn’t.
Bagel Nash, Arndale Centre, Manchester city centre
32 years ago
by Mister Tum
in Food Shops
Chicken bacon cheese tomato club Panini £3.50
Overcoming my predilection for shunning fooderies with pretentious and/or irksome monikers I staggered into Bagel bloody Nash for a baked buggering potato, only to discover that they were off the menu. Settling on the Chicken bacon cheese tomato club Panini thing I sat and waited the thirty or so seconds to be served and was pleased to see they grilled it right there and then. Essentially comfort food with ingredients you wouldn’t turn away on a windy Manchester day this Panini ticked a bunch of hot food boxes and provided much-needed sustenance to a more than acceptable level. Sliced in twain twixt centre line, this cocksure little bagel-usurper proved doubly reassuring as one half alone would simply be criminally unfulfilling. Two halves made whole however equals wholesome and hearty fare which sates that unappeasable monster called hunger for at least another hour or two. Pricey but nicey.
Bagel Nosh Panini – way tastier than the sticker albums.
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