Showing posts with label steakhouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label steakhouse. Show all posts

As the name suggests, Portland Grill is on Portland Street in Manchester City Centre, but despite being a popular and busy street, it's easy to miss, nestled behind a small shop front.

As you walk in, you start at a stairwell with "Welcome" written in a variety of languages, and a date stone with the year 1910 carved into it, giving a nod to the heritage of this building, and an explanation as to the small entrance and downward staircase, because once you get downstairs it opens into a very large cellar space.






The space is very surprising, and furnished with tables, chairs and booths but not cramped in, taking advantage of the space. It was also a very curious thing to sit looking at your menu but see up through cellar windows onto the streets above, and people walking past.

We are greeted and taken to our table. We note that it's quite quiet for an early Saturday evening, but our waiter informs us that it gets busier as the night progresses.

We are given a wonderful meat-centric menu, which has some great choices of burgers, steaks and chicken, all for very reasonable prices for the city centre, and even offering an Early Bird special. Our party chooses to start by ordering buffalo wings, nachos, and onion rings. American classics.

The food arrives in good time and is both fresh and tasty. The onion rings are crisp, the buffalo wings are succulent, tasty, and wonderfully messy to eat, and the nachos are crunchy, but could possibly have done with some more cheese, or a melted cheese sauce rather than melted grated cheese, but they are accompanied by a really tasty fresh salsa, which our entire party shared.



Our waiter is friendly and attentive, making sure we're enjoying each course. For our mains we all decided we were very much in a burger mood, and two of us ordered the mushroom burger, whilst I ordered a classic American cheeseburger, all of which again arrived in good time.

The burgers were excellently presented with no messing around, no wooden serving planks, just good food as it should be, and were tasty, well seasoned, and used fresh ingredients. They also came with lovely hot crispy chips, which is always good... too many places are let down by lukewarm soft chips.


As we enjoyed our meals, we saw another table had some huge stacked burgers turn up, which must be The Portland Tower burger. They looked great, definitely one for next time!

We really enjoyed our visit here, as we only decided to pop in on a whim, and weren't expecting anything special, but ended up leaving having had good food and good service in a pleasant and spacious environment for a really good price. We'll definitely return.





Portland Grill
103 Portland Street
Manchester
M1 6NF
(0161) 236 3453
http://www.portlandgrill.co.uk

Portland Grill

by on 18:03
As the name suggests, Portland Grill is on Portland Street in Manchester City Centre, but despite being a popular and busy street, it...
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The Wild West Diner is an impressive looking new restaurant that has appeared in The Sands Venue on the Promenade in Blackpool. It's really enticing as it's clear money has been spent on the theming, giving it the right feel for Blackpool. It looks impressive and fun, and the menu looks quite good too!

When you walk in, the theming is superb, all wooden beams, mock Western facades, and photos of the Old West, as the song "I'm Just A Country Girl" plays. High hopes! A server in a plaid shirt asks us to sit wherever we like.





The menu is what you'd expect from a Western themed restaurant, big breakfasts, ribs, chicken, burgers, steaks etc. As we were deciding what to have, the waiter came over to ask us for our drinks order, so we just went for a couple of Diet Cokes. This waiter seemed quite stone faced and didn't seem very happy or interested. When he brought the drinks he asked for our food order, but we weren't ready. He came back another 2 times before we were ready... giving us the sense that he just wanted to get us in and out. We opted for appetizers of breaded garlic mushrooms and cheese and bacon potato skins, and mains of the smoked chilli dog and the Wild West Beef Cheeseburger. The waiter asked if he should bring the starters at the same time as the main... this was a really weird thing to ask, but we just said ok, we didn't mind.

At this point we both realised that the cola tasted as if it was either diluted, running out of syrup, or a cheap copy of Coke, it was also going flat. We didn't complain though, it was just a glass of pop.

The food turned up in a strange order, the first being one of our starters and the other one's main, then the others a few minutes later, again with no smile or anything from the waiter. The garlic mushrooms were tasty, if not pre-frozen, and the potato skins had lots of bacon, but were sadly quite dry.



Then we moved onto the mains. The chips were plain frozen chips, and cooked well, but also a bit dry. A bit of seasoning would've pepped them up a bit, but as they weren't seasoned we just used salt and pepper. My partner said his hot dog was tasty, but the chilli on top was luke warm, and not very spicy. My burger was an 8oz monster, but a real solid block of meat which again was pretty bland, lacking seasoning. It had cheese and a bit of limp lettuce but it was in a nice bun. It was also extremely greasy! After biting into it, I was able to hold it over my plate and squeeze it, to then have liquid fat pour out onto the plate. I couldn't finish it. The music stopped being country at this point, veering into dull modern songs I've never heard of. Shame.




At this point I popped to the toilet, where the theming continued, which is a nice touch. However after I washed my hands I noticed that although it was 6pm on a thursday, the cleaning rota said it hadn't been checked since 10am the day before! Not really what you want to see of the levels of cleanliness, especially when you know your customers will see this rota!


When I returned, my partner said that the waiter had asked if we were finished, and cleared our plates, but he didn't ask if everything had been ok (he also didn't ask this during the meal) or if we wanted the bill or desserts, so we were left sat at the table wondering what we were meant to do. The waiter was just stood at the bar chatting with another member of staff. Did he want us to get his attention or go over to him to progress the meal? 

Eventually he came over and picked up our glasses, "shall I get you your bill?" he asked, but I interjected, "uh... do you do desserts?", he genuinely looked surprised, "we do... Did you want something?", "well is there a menu or anything?", "yeah I'll get it", he then went to get the menu (not taking the glasses with him, oddly), so we had a quick look. The desserts didn't really look that interesting, they didn't even have a description, they were just a footnote in a small box at the bottom of the back of the menu. 

So we didn't bother. We got the bill paid and left. The waiter didn't smile once.

It's a real shame, because visually the place looked great, it's had money spent on it, from the antler chandeliers down to the brushed leather booths, but as was displayed on this visit, it seems to be all show and no substance, with the food being mediocre and the customer service being abysmal. 

Wanted to like it, but we won't be going back here again. Poor show.



Wild West Diner
The Sands Venue
Promenade
Blackpool

Wild West Diner

by on 13:49
The Wild West Diner is an impressive looking new restaurant that has appeared in The Sands Venue on the Promenade in Blackpool. It's ...
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