Marco Pierre White is a famous and well-known celebrity chef, who is rather big in countries such…read moreas the United Kingdom and Australia, this is one of his many restaurants, this one is part of the Steakhouse Bar & Grill chain.
I have visited a large number of Marco's branches in the NY Italian and Wheeler's of St James' brands, and this is my second visit to one of his "Steakhouses", the last being in December last year for my birthday in Newcastle, where I had a great meal, sadly this meal was not so good.
After arriving in Newcastle ahead of Manchester City's game against Newcastle United this evening, I wanted a decent meal after having an early start with the 2 and a half hour train journey to Newcastle, before going back to my hotel, just a few minutes walk away.
This place, which I'm going to refer to as MPW Steakhouse for the majority of my review is in a decent central location inside Hotel Indigo and is within 2 or 3 minutes on foot from the Central Station.
The menu choice is satisfactory but does not tend to include a great deal of food other than meats, for example, there wasn't a good selection of fish other than a salmon steak.
I was told the gluten-free selection wasn't a menu necessarily but was just adaptions made to dishes. They seemed to have far too many staff working, for a restaurant which was so quiet, some of the staff seemed friendly, kind and patient and even helped me find this place after I was struggling after getting off my delayed train; others I found to be unfriendly and rude, such as my server.
For my starter, I ordered the French Onion Soup with gluten-free bread, and it was a giant mess, kind of like Manchester United have been recently where they lost to the mighty Manchester City and drew with Leicester and Burnley.
The gluten-free bread was like half a bread roll, but small, it was carelessly thrown into my soup and appeared to have some sort of melted cheese which I didn't ask for, a strong cheese it tasted disgusting.
The soup as a whole was also poor, it had too many onions floating about and was just a giant mess, it felt like just a giant bowl of onions floating in boiled water, but if the bread and onions weren't there this place would look like a hot pile of diaherera.
Moving on to my main course, I ordered the Marco Polo Pork Belly, the quality was okay, it was a little fatty and not as meaty as I would have liked at times, the crust on time did taste decent but with the combination of poor quality meat, it sort of ruined the dish which was a shame. I ordered the triple cooked chips with this having been told they were gluten-free, however, they just tasted like giant cut lumps of potato, they were barely seasoned and it lacked flavour other than potato. In my opinion, fresh chips should be great and flavoursome, perhaps adding something like garlic or rosemary or even cilantro would have made the dish better.
I also had an issue with the staff member, when I asked what come with my dish they were rude in the sense she replied "what's on the menu", I didn't really understand what it was so I was upset she didn't seem willing to explain when I asked, which in my opinion is either down to rudeness or a lack of training where she didn't appear to know the menu that well herself.
The overall feel inside the restaurant was okay, it didn't feel as nice or high end as other MPW restaurants I have visited such as Wheeler's of St James or MPW Steakhouse, both of which are in Liverpool.
Poor food and service quality combined with a high-end price proves this place is deserving of a single one-star rating, having triggered my disappointment and aggravation.
