Reviewing lunch time food and evening dining in Manchester's city centre
Food Shops
Zorbas, Arndale Market, Arndale Centre, Manchester
16 months ago
by Guest
in Food Shops
Many thanks to PieEater for his MANCMUNCH review that he submitted here.
I like my food. Cheap and plenty of it is my game. Zorba’s is the Greek outlet in the Food Court. Wide selection of your fave Greek treats such as kebabs, Stifado stew and so on.
Today I went for their Chicken & Spinach, with rice. A tasty meal of Chicken mixed with a herby spinach sauce. Decent portion, as with most places in the Food Court, served in a polystyrene tub. You can take-out as well, if you don’t fancy fighting for a table.
Good food, price isn’t so bad considering, would try again.
SPAR – City Tower, Piccadilly Plaza
01 year ago
by Gavlar
in Food Shops
As most of you that have read my reviews know, I am a great admirer of the meal deal from SPAR, this (sometimes expensive) convenience store is not normally my first choice for shopping establishments but since the City Tower chapter opened I have been converted (only at lunchtimes mind!).
The meal deal they provide is a perfect lunchtime filler at the standard price of £3
My last review of SPAR was for a wrap, and while the wraps were my preferred choice when it came to the SPAR meal deal, I have been seduced by the slightly more healthy* option of the pasta salad.
So, my meal choice of the last few weeks, and my reason for lack of reviews recently, has been the Honey and Mustard Chicken Pasta, Vimto and Mini Cheddars, and will be what I am reviewing today. As with my previous reviews, the drink and crisps come as standard so don’t want to focus on them as they taste the same regardless of where they are purchased.
The main part of the meal, is without a doubt, wonderful. You have to dig around for one that has a decent ratio of chicken to pasta but most of them (check at the back) are perfect. the pasta is cooked perfectly and the sweetcorn/peppers mix beautifully into it. The chicken isn’t amazing and is a bit on the thin side but is actual chicken and not some processed concoction you get from some takeaways. The whole thing is drizzled in a very nice honey/mustard dressing and finishes the dish off perfectly. I do advice giving the packet a shake before opening to get the dressing suitably covered over all the pasta, as it seems to settle a bit on the shelf. (Note: this does cover the provided fork in dressing so a napkin is required for a quick wipe).
As its pasta, it does tend to fill you up a bit more and I have sometimes found I leave the crisps for a later snack as am usually a bit full after I have washed everything down with a bit of Vimto, but I suppose I could always swap the crisps for some chocolate as allowed by the meal deal but then I do like having a snack in the afternoons 
* Health benefit claim is not based on any actual facts or figures just speculation and rumour
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…
Pancho’s Burritos, Arndale Market, Manchester
11 year ago
by The Hobbit
in Food Shops
On numerous occasions recently I have found myself strolling round the Arndale Market, looking for something different to cure the onset of the early afternoon hunger pangs. I normally wander aimlessly, moving from stall to stall, hoping to find something to take my fancy and a part of the Market has been closed recently whilst they put in new stalls. This Friday I noticed it was open again and one of the new stalls caught my eye, “Pancho’s Burritos”, a tiny stall with a small menu, but it looked very promising, “go on then” I thought, “can’t be worse than Bar Burrito”, which I hate by the way.
The list of ingredients that goes into one of Pancho’s burrito’s was impressive, rice, salsa, peppers, sour cream, I can’t remember the full list but you can have either a Pork, Chicken, Beef or veggie burrito, “amazing” I thought and didn’t bother to read the rest of the menu (or the rest of the options for the burrito, I was already sold on the idea).
The staff were so pleasant, friendly and helpful and they actually looked Mexican, I know I sound racist but I would rather have a burrito made by a nice, polite Mexican gentleman than three girls who only work at the place to get them through college and who throw it together in an instance (yes I’m talking about Bar Burrito again).
Like I said, I didn’t read the rest of the options for the burrito, which I’m glad about. The polite man asked if I would like a spinach, plain or pepper tortilla, “incredible you get a choice of tortilla”, I went with the spinach, then he kindly asked if I would like it spicy or mild, “even better”, I opted to spice it up.
The care, attention and expertise that the nice man made the burrito with confirms my slightly racist remark about the food, making this place a goldmine because the people who work there actually know what they are doing and take pride in the food they prepare. This is backed up by the fact they heat up each tortilla separately and only when an order has taken place, and by the way they put the ingredients into the tortilla in just the right order.
Once my new amigo had finished tightly wrapping my burrito and he passed it to me I was surprised at the size of it, nicely wrapped in tinfoil and about the size of 5 sticks of dynamite taped together, I was impressed.
I took my explosive over to a table, unwrapped the burrito and bit into it, the number of flavours that exploded was wonderful, you could taste the rice, salsa, etc and the pork was so well cooked and tender to bite, I was staggered. Further into the burrito I worked out why it looked like 5 sticks of dynamite, it blew my head off, the spices were very hot indeed but this only added to the burrito, complimenting all the other flavours and after the hit of spice you got the warm, soft, gentle taste of the sour cream, if only all burritos were this good.
Sombrero’s off to Pancho’s Burritos it was an amazing experience of flavours and spice, I will definitely going back and for £3.99 it is well worth it. This is how you make a burrito, RIP Bar Burrito, you will not be missed.
Eat, Arndale Centre, Manchester
01 year ago
by The Hobbit
in Food Shops
Saturday mornings are normally a scramble for food for me, I normally do my weekly shop on a Saturday afternoon/Sunday the previous week, so by the following Friday evening the cupboards are pretty bare. Plus I am generally feeling the effects of the post work, Friday night drinking binge, which just adds to the fact I need food, but with minimal effort required. This past Saturday was slightly different, yes the kitchen was as barren of food but I found myself with a clear head, strolling round the Arndale Centre around 9am with hunger pains. Ambling past “Eat” and noticing one of their menu items was “Full English Breakfast”, I smiled and proclaimed “RESULT”.
What a mistake, I quickly shuffled to the counter, smiled and asked “Can I have the Full English please?”, to which the response was, “Sorry we have ran out of the English breakfast”. HOW THE HELL CAN YOU RUN OUT OF A FULL ENGLISH BY 9AM, IF AT ALL. I panicked, caught between walking out of the store and asking how can you not have a full English, my instincts took over and I scanned the menu, Eggs Benedict?? Can’t be that bad?? Fill a hole for a while?? Mistake number two.
I ordered a Mocha to sit fiddling with until the food was ready, which was very nice to be fair, but you can’t really screw up a coffee with these coffee machines nowadays. Sitting patiently waiting for the food to arrive, I was snapped out of my day dream by one of the girls behind the counter screeching “IIIGGGGSSS BIINIIDIIICHHH”, was that my order?
What the girl passed me over the counter was nothing short of woeful, it wasn’t a plate, it wasn’t a tray, it was a piece of tin foil about the size of a jar lid, with the logo and tag line “The Real Food Company” plastered all over the foil. I gently and slowly took this disgraceful meal off the girl and looked at her with confusion flickering in my eyes. I unwrapped the foil, which to my surprise wasn’t tightly wrapped making the meal inside even smaller, this was turning into a complete joke, it didn’t even have any sauce on it. It was one of the smallest muffins I have seen with a poached egg and shrunken slice of bacon on it.
“OK OK”, I told myself, could be quality not quantity, wanting so much for this meal to give me some satisfaction, mistake number three. Basically what “Eat” had done was to cook all the full English food, put it on muffins, then toasted the muffin once someone ordered a meal. It was terrible, eggs were tasteless, the bacon hard and dry, they hadn’t even buttered the muffin and the sauce normally drenched over Eggs Benedict was just a pipe dream.
I will certainly never be consuming anything again from so called “Eat, The Real Food Company”, what a terrible first meal to start the day with, a disgraceful, soul sapping experience.
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!
Tesco, Market Street
01 year 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
11 year 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.
Portland Plaice, Portland Street, Manchester
31 year ago
by The Hobbit
in Food Shops
With eight pound coins rattling round in my back pocket and seeing as Friday is the sabbath of the fish and chips faithful, I decided to venture to the aforementioned establishment after work for my weekly prayer to the mushy pea gods (pea wet being the messiah). Staring up at the menu (which was as much point as yesterday’s election). I opted for fish, chips and gravy, standard Friday fodder from my neck of the woods.
First they loaded the tray with a huge amount of decent sized chips, which made me slobber with excitement. The excitement was soon replaced with confusion as I watched them pick up a huge fish and place it on the chips, I wondered if they had forgotten about the gravy? As the chip attendant moved to the back of the shop and lifted a lid off a pan, I gazed in open mouthed horror as they poured gravy over that lovely fish, like watching Chariots of Fire, it was all happening in slow motion.
There are some things in life that you just don’t do. They aren’t written down, or passed through the generations, they are just known! You don’t eat yellow snow, you don’t pull on Superman’s cape, you don’t piss into the wind, you don’t call ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson a softarse and you NEVER EVER EVER POUR GRAVY OVER THE FISH. Taking my tray of spoilt sodden sabbath nosh, I headed back to my Apartment, bottom lip trembling with disappointment.
I sat down and opened the carton to determine as to what extent the school boy error had ruined my meal (I take that back, a school boy would not make such a bad mistake). The actual quantity of the meal surprised me, the fish was even bigger than at first glance and the portion of chips was epic.
On their own the three elements that make up this meal where excellent, the chips were cooked to perfection and lightly seasoned to add taste. The gravy was truly awesome, tasty, runny enough to soggyify your chips and thick enough to stick to your ribs (as it should). Even after gravygate the fish was also top notch, the inside was expertly cooked, sadly cannot comment on the crispy batter, but I still consumed the entire meal.
After the roller-coaster of emotions I would definitely recommend the Portland Plaice. I don’t think it be will beaten on the size of the portions (justifying the cost??? Slightly over priced in my opinion) and the quality of the product was excellent, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make sure they get what you ordered right.
Zorba The Greek, Arndale Market, Manchester
21 year ago
by i_am_big_g
in Food Shops
Never been before despite many previous visits to the Arndale Market. We both had Chicken Yeeros (chicken kebab to you) and it was very tasty.
Being critical, they added salad etc to the first one which came out without first asking – I had that one as I’m not fussy.
Other than the tastiness, my only other comment would be it was heavy on the salas and light on the chicken.
Also, they had no chilli sauce left today which was disappointing.
Cost – £9.90 for 2 people which is not too bad for hot food, eaten in
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