Reviewing lunch time food and evening dining in Manchester's city centre
Posts tagged peppers
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.
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
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.
Giovannis Deli, New York Street
11 year ago
Meal: Baked Potato with Tuna Mix and Cheese
Having only ever had a breakfast barm from Giovannis I looked forward to sampling their main menu.
I opted for a baked potato with tuna mix and cheese, the mix involved chopped pepper and onion.
The meal was very nice indeed, the potato was cooked just how I liked with a slight crisp to the skin while still soft and fluffy in the middle. The tuna mix was equally nice and the grated cheddar cheese topped it off nicely, although there was quite a lot of it.
A thoroughly enjoyable meal and I would definitely recommend it and have it again.
Rice, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
01 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Fast Food Chains
Chicken Biryani with rice.
Normally you’d get a curry from a curry house, but unfortunately, due to being challenged by a fellow foodie and having the 6 loyalty stamps saved up, this reviewer had to forego his usual awesome Nasi Goren to experiment with this dish instead. A pretty standard but sauceless curry that was spicy enough to cause flop sweats but without the prevailing ‘have-I-injured-myself’ after-burn of, say, a particularly piquant Madras from your local curry house. If you’re going to bite the no-diet bullet and hit Rice up for one of its excellent dishes you might as well go with a reliable Nasi Goren or Malaysian chilli chicken, rather than squandering your attention on this arid but still appetising Biryani. Don’t settle for good when you can have great!
Rice – Piccadilly Gardens
01 year ago
by Gavlar
in Fast Food Chains
Meal: American BBQ Chicken (minus mushrooms)
The chicken is combined with peppers, noodles and baby sweetcorn mixed with a nicely cooked egg-fried rice covered in a tangy-sweet bbq sauce.
I’ve had this meal a few times now and it has to be my favourite meal from Rice. I order the meal without mushrooms as Im not a fan of the fungi.
This meal is a perfect stomach filler and wont leave you wanting more, the price is a little high for a mid-week lunch, £5.99 but as I said it does fill you up and tastes amazing so is worth it as a one off every now and again.
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