Clearly, this have taken a turn for the worst since the first two reviews in 2010. The third account seems much more likely based on my experience today.
I don't like chains but there really is no way around it at the Trafford Centre. Every restaurant I've been to there has been extremely disappointing. Giraffe was no different. We went in because it was the least crowded. We stood patiently at the 'please wait to be seated' sign as several employees ignored our presence at the entrance. It was mostly empty so I couldn't understand why no one would come over to seat us. Finally we were given a seat and looked over the menu.
About 20 minutes went by before the waiter came back to take our order. Nothing fancy or time consuming, mind you.....a hot dog & fries from the children's menu for my son, a grilled chicken sandwich for me and Parmesan chicken Kiev for my husband with a shared starter of nachos.
Being from the States, I had my idea of what nachos would be. They are generally hot, with melted cheese and tomato, peppers, sour cream and guacamole. Again, nothing fancy here but somehow it still took at least 20 minutes for them to come out. What was more mind boggling was the entire dish was cold. The nachos were cold, the shredded cheese was cold, the (obviously straight-from-a-can) corn was cold....not at all what it sounded like on the menu. My son wouldn't eat any, but it wasn't a large portion at all (sharing platter????) so it was gone fairly fast.
We sat thinking our main would be along any minute. How wrong we were. As we sat waiting, we looked around to see why the food could be taking so long. Surely there was a large party somewhere that was taking up the kitchen's time. But what we noticed was there seemed to be far more staff walking around than there were customers. A lot more. It took so long my 9 year old was almost crying because he was so hungry. 45 minutes after the nachos were finished, the food arrived.
I was SHOCKED to see the amount of food on my son's plate, which was ordered from the children's menu. The hot dog was a ridiculous size...about 11 inches long and 2 inches high. It was served on an equally large bun, although that was very VERY stale. And there was a large portion of fries with it. Ironically, I had a small 'cup' of fries served with my sandwich, which looked like it would be impossible to eat because it was about 10 inches high. I quickly realised the bulk of it was 90% lettuce which made it look mahoosive. Once the lettuce was removed, it was ordinary size.
My first bite was a bit of a shock because it didn't taste like chicken at all. In fact, I stopped chewing and lifted the top off the bun to double check. It was indeed chicken, but smothered in greasy cold sauteed onions, slimey mushrooms and a BBQ sauce with no taste. The bun was stale as well. It had a total lack of taste and a very odd consistency. It was clear the chicken breast was of the frozen, processed variety. All the salt & pepper in the world couldn't help it.
Hubby's chicken actually smelled very very garlicky...which made me a little jealous because at least his would taste like something. I was wrong. He said his had the same lack of taste. His was supposed to be Kiev, but it was just a strange green pesto-looking sauce splattered on top of the same kind of frozen, processed chicken breast as my sandwich. There was a lump of mashed potatoes and mounds of lettuce and a half of a lemon.
I felt bad that we took my hubby here for his Father's Day lunch. We sat underwhelmed at how we had spent the last 75 minutes...until we got the bill. It was just shy of £50 (about $80). Mind you, my son drank plain water, I had sparking water and hubs had Red Stripe beer. No desserts, no salads, no bottles of wine...just the one shared lame starter and our terrible mains. I was recently out in London with 3 guests at a great tapas place where we shared about 6 plates and had a bottle of wonderful wine and it cost about the same.
Needless to say, not only will I never go to this Giraffe, but I will never trust ANY Giraffe because there is no reason to expect the standards to be any better if they can't get it right here. Nor will I eat at any of the places in the Trafford Centre. That's the third horrible meal in three different places there. Now all I can hope is that we haven't been poisoned like the reviewer before me, although I wouldn't be surprised at all if we have been. read more