I've not visited Frankie and Benny's since 2014, where I had two awful experiences in Rochdale and then at Liverpool Airport, since then I know Frankie and Benny's have made some changes, such as opening this new branch in the past year or so and by changing their menu and the feel of the restaurant in some ways, which made me come back today while passing through the Printworks. The most recent time i've visited a similar place to F&B's was at TGI Friday's, where I visited two different branches around late Summer and Autumn of this year and found it awful, so I wanted to see if
I came into this branch and it seemed very busy, it was quite a large place and did go down and was much bigger than what it looked in general, sadly I was located close to the back of the restaurant where the signal is awful, I couldn't even connect to the wi-fi or the other wifi which I was connected to beforehand, The Cloud which I presume was the wifi run by Sky, it still appeared that I could connect, but nothing would work, even my mobile data was incredibly slow.
When I was greeted, I was given a pager and had a short wait to get to get a table, this was quite awkward as it wasn't a really busy time when I visited, however I allowed it as I didn't really want to go anywhere else as I liked the improved menu and wanted to give Frankie and Benny's one more shot.
I decided to order a starter and a main course today, for my starter I opted for the Potato Skins with BBQ Chicken, Cheese and Sweetcorn. The starters taken quite a while to arrive, and took so long I even questioned and wondered whether the mains and starters would arrive at the same time.
I did have some problem with the staff, it just seems sometimes they were friendly, and sometimes they weren't, I did ask for help in connecting to the wifi and I was unable to connect and she basically blamed it on the signal, and didn't seem too helpful, albeit I admit their might not have been anything she could do, but she could have seemed more friendly and helpful when assisting me. This made me frustrated as one of the reasons I was drawn in was through the advertising of free wifi, even for this store and it was misleading considering this.
The pricing was a little expensive as it did come to £50 for 2 starters and 2 mains and drinks for my friend and I, this might seem reasonable but some items just seemed slightly overpriced by a pound or two.
I was also upset I couldn't get a signal after finding out about a loyalty scheme where you get a £10 voucher if you sign up, I decided to try and do this and I was once again quite upset to be told that I couldn't use it until my next visit, which was down to the code taking around 24 hours to process for some bizarre, frustrating reason.
My potato skins starter was okay, it was quite nice however it would have been nice to have some more chicken inside it, apart from that I did reasonably enjoy it and it was quite filling. I would like to comment the starters were a little too big, my friend ordered garlic bread and received a full garlic bread pizza and he also found this to be far too much just for a starter, and it is probably something that needs to be shared and should be used as a sharing board, rather than a starter.
I then moved onto my main course, I ordered the maple glazed gammon which came with a jacket potato, 2 fried eggs and some peas, this food was okay, the cut of gammon was quite nice however it was quite a fatty piece around the edges, so I did have to cut some of it off as I don't normally like to eat the fat.
The jacket potato was basic and of course required seasoning with salt, pepper and butter however the butter was on my plate to add anyway. The peas were just a small number and didn't taste very good quality and basically didn't need to be there as they weren't a great addition to the meal.
My friend, ordered a burger which was around £12 with chips and coleslaw - It was quite pricey because my friend just ordered a plain burger, which didn't have any cheese and salad and he was basically charged for one with lots of toppings on, which he didn't have. He said it was "just a burger" and didn't seem to comment on it, it basically seemed average. They didn't seem to ask how they wanted it cooked as they would at a burger specialist place such as GBK.
Overall, I did like this place but there are sadly so many flaws with this branch which includes pricing, the wifi and service and of course the wait for a table at a time which wasn't really busy in general so sadly, I feel I can only give this place a high two star rating. read more