Reviewing lunch time food and evening dining in Manchester's city centre
Posts tagged bacon
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…
Save Our Sandwich, Fountain Street, Manchester
01 year ago
by i_am_big_g
in Cafe
To be honest, I only went in because Stevo had suggested it a couple of times and I couldnt say no for a 3rd time…
I had a quick browse through the sandwich menu and opted for a chicken, bacon & spinach mayo ciabata. The price was ok, but the sandwich was pretty uninspiring - not especially tasty and nothing to get excited about.
The only redeeming factor was the excellent selection of snacks they sell to accompany the sandwiches. I had a bag of onion rings which I can never resist and they were delicious. I think it sums up my enjoyment of the place - crisps ought to be the also ran, the inconsequential part of lunch to top off the carb level, but my onion rings are the only reason I’d go back…
Incidentally, why does everywhere charge so much for upgrading to a ciabata. Lucky that I’m so greedy, or I wouldn’t go for it!
Franklins Deli, York Street, Manchester
01 year ago
by i_am_big_g
in Cafe
I drive past this spot just before I reach the office every morning and when at a loose end yesterday lunchtime, I decided to pop in.
A good selection of is available from Franklins including carvery style hot meats, jacket potatoes, as well as the more standard hot and cold sandwiches.
Looking at the boards behind the counter, I immediately spotted the club sandwich special – described as being triple decked and overfilled with bacon, chicken, tomatoes and egg mayonnaise.
It certainly was over stuffed! It was one of the most delicious sandwiches I have had in a long time. I was barely able to take bites out of it because of how plentifully it was filled. The amount of egg mayonnaise was staggering, and I was not disappointed by the amount of bacon and chicken either.
What can I say other than go and try one!
As for the place itself, it was a little quiet and you got the feeling that you were taking the staff for a test drive; but, seeing as it has only been open for a few days, that’s no surprise.
As I had enjoyed it so much, I immediately recommended it to a colleague who popped in for a jacket potato with veggie chilli – which she enjoyed thoroughly.
I will be going back soon.
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.
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.
Philpotts, City Tower, Manchester
21 year ago
by i_am_big_g
in Fast Food Chains
£6.10 for sandwich, tyrells crisps, can of pop and “divine” chocolate bar
Its fair to say that not much can go wrong with a chicken, bacon and avocado sandwich with a squeeze of lemon and a grind of S&P. Not much did go wrong and it was a tasty treat. Lots of mayo mixed in made it lovely and moist and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Then again, I paid £6.10 for lunch and I’d be pretty disappointed it it had not been enjoyable.
Verdict: – a good choice if you’re feeling flush or its raining and you dont want to let the rain ruin your ‘do
Boots, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
41 year ago
by The Hobbit
in Food Shops
Meal: Boots Meal Deal, Chicken Sandwiches, Walkers Max Chargrilled Steak Crisps and a Strawberry and Banana Innocent Smoothie
I have been putting off reviewing a Boots Meal Deal for some time now, because I find it very hard to force myself to have a boring meal, Boots meal deals are generally not bad, but they are not that good either, today I decided to take one for the team.
Having walked into the store with and air of disappointment already hanging over me like a cloud, my mood soon brightened when, to my surprise many of sandwiches were ‘Triples’, with different fillings in each, WAHOO.
Feeling clucky I went with the chicken triple. The bacon sandwich was edible but the bacon was a combination of over crispified in parts with a mild front of mayo sogginess in majority of other areas, disappointing overall. The salad and chicken sandwich was better, all the salad filling was fresh and tasty but it seems the lettuce was seasoned with a essence of soil, again letting down the sandwich.
Spotting the cloud of disappointment reappearing on the horizon I started on the final chicken and stuffing sandwich and I have to say the cloud quickly dispersed. The chicken was perfectly cooked and the stuffing was as near perfection as you will get on a sandwich from a shop, only getting better if you raid the fridge on a boxing day morning for a leftover breakfast (don’t shake your head, we have all done it).
Overall the sandwiches were respectable, the chicken was excellent, only some of the ingredients of the meal let it down, with the size innocent smoothie working against the overall rating, luckily the crisps counter acted this.
Bagel Nash, Arndale Centre, Manchester city centre
31 year 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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