Fajitas, enchiladas and fish fingers

So. Husband's birthday earlier this week. A midweek birthday is always a tough one to work out what to do - when the children were younger, we'd have arranged a babysitter and just gone out for the evening, but they are much more aware these days. God love 'em - they even managed to keep a secret so well, they didn't even tell him we went to pick up a present from one of his favourite shops.

The children are not for being left out any more. A family meal out it had to be, so it was more than lucky that Chiquito Mexican Restaurant offered us a voucher to give them a try. When I lived down south, I'd been to quite a few of their restaurants but when I first moved here, there were none. In the last couple of years, we have made one or two trips to the newer local branches in the area. In the meantime, we've been to newer chains like Las Iguanas which offered greater variety of food options.

Monkey staring aimlessly at the Reebok

We went to the restaurant near Bolton Wanderers' stadium, which impressed Monkey as our table had a panoramic view of the ground . Wednesday early evening was never going to be a busy time and sure enough, it was half empty when we arrived so the service was very attentive. The guy that showed us to our table had some good banter going with the children.

Checking out the menu, I liked that they had two children's menus - Monkey has a voracious appetite whereas Missy Woo is not as hungry. The "young adults" menu was also more adventurous than the kids menu, again reflecting their respective food personalities. Whilst we demolished a couple of bowls of what I think was sour cream and chive flavoured popcorn, Monkey chose fajitas with chicken in tomato sauce, which is one of his favourite things to eat, and Missy Woo? She went for fish fingers! As it was that or their standard choice of pasta, I wasn't going to fight a battle. They both chose a milkshake as their drink, which cost a little extra than those that are part of their meal deal. The adult menu was huge - far wider than I remember it and I struggled to choose because it was like reading a book!

We skipped starters on this occasion and went straight to mains. It meant, along with the fact that it was quiet, that our food arrived pretty quickly after we'd ordered. Like Monkey, I'd gone for fajitas and we both received substantial portions, so I was glad I'd skipped starters. Husband chose enchiladas which he demolished fairly quickly and actually had some of my fajitas. Mine was pulled pork which was  gorgeous - the barbeque sauce was a great mix of sweet and sour. My only minor criticisms of the fajitas were that I had no plate so no place to lay out a tortilla, fill it and roll it and that my tortillas were rolled so tightly that they had all torn in the middle. That did not detract from the enjoyment of the food. Monkey enjoyed his fajitas although he didn't touch the salsa. Missy Woo enjoyed her fish fingers but they were fish fingers and chips, nothing fancy.

My fajita filling - pulled pork and veg

Knowing that there was chocolate orange cake at home, we were going to skip dessert too. However, the children's meals both included a dessert so husband cracked and ordered one too. Missy chose strawberry sundae and Monkey went adventurous again, choosing churros that he has never had before.  Both of them got substantial portions so although I hadn't ordered anything, I got to snaffle a fair bit and very nice they were too.

All throughout our visit, the service was friendly and attentive. If I were to have a criticism, it would be that because it was quiet, it was a little too attentive at times, and they did that thing where they asked us if our meals were OK almost seconds after we got them as we were served by a number of people. Apart from that, it was good and we were certainly made to feel welcome and there was no pressure to finish our food quickly so it was nice and relaxed. Being a fairly new unit, the layout is good so you're not on top of all the tables and the children love the light fitting made from beer bottles.

We left, carrying birthday balloons with full tummies and smiles on our faces. We had a great time and with the increased variety on the Chiquito menu, we will definitely be back soon.

(Chiquito kindly sent us a £50 voucher to use in one of their restaurants and were aware in advance of the approximate time and location of our visit. We were also asked to tell the staff on arrival that we had a voucher. All pictures and opinions are our own.) 

Food hygiene ratings - do you know how safe your food is?

I got involved in some interesting Twitter discussions yesterday after I tweeted this:

Nooooooo. Our fave Indian restaurant has been given a one star hygiene rating.
— Kate C (@kateab) January 31, 2013

It would appear that lots of people don't know about the food hygiene rating system whilst others use it obsessively.

What the hygiene rating is the result of an inspection of all food outlets by environmental health officers at your local council. They confirm a star rating based on 3 factors - how the food is prepared, cooked and stored, the condition of the building such as layout, cleanliness, ventilation and finally, how the business manages all this to ensure that food is safe. (In Scotland, the scheme is slightly different and establishments get a pass or an improvement required rating instead of stars.)

Environmental health officers always did do this, but in the past, you only heard about them if they closed a place down. Now, though, you can find the rating they have given each outlet by visiting the Food Standards Agency ratings website or by downloading their smartphone app.

I've used it for a while, not generally to check my regular haunts but for new ones - when looking on sites like Just Eat, I realised that I had no idea about some of these places and checking their ratings was a real eye-opener. Several places - rated highly by customers - had shockingly low ratings. My own lower limit is 3 stars, which is considered generally satisfactory. Choosing those takeaways with higher ratings has generally worked out OK for us.

Then I discovered the local chippy (which is also a Chinese) was only rated 1 star. I know this because they put the sign on the door - the council hands out stickers or signs which are currently optional to display, although you can ask staff if one is not displayed what their rating is. Since then, I've restricted myself to buying chips there, as I figure there is not a lot wrong they can do with chips, being as they are cooked in hot oil. I think the sticker might have affected their business as it's since disappeared.

I found out about our favourite Indian (we don't go often but we were there last on Christmas Eve) through a story on the local newspaper website about the new ratings for the local area. Premises can be inspected at any time of the year (and may not be inspected every year) but they must do press releases at this time of year. As it turns out, this restaurant was inspected just before Christmas so I guess the new rating didn't get onto the system until recently as I'm sure it was better than that before.

On discussing this on Twitter, I discovered some like me who stick with a limit of 3 stars, whereas another said her husband (who is a chef) will only use 5 star rated establishments as that is the rating of where he works! It can be quite hard to achieve 5 stars. I mean, even Ruth Watson the hotel inspector, lost her 5 star rating and got 1 star instead, apparently over concerns about the cooking method of some dishes. Overall food handling hygiene may not be bad so it's not an exact science.

As many other people didn't seem to know about this scheme at all. At least one found out that one of their favourite places was only 1 star and another recounted to me that she had only learned about a scheme after her favourite got zero stars (Eek!) and was then closed down. Having one star doesn't seem quite so bad after all!

Would you let a scheme like this affect your decision where to eat? Do you pay any attention to these ratings, either online or displayed in a food outlet? What would you do if you found out that your local favourite - be it takeaway or restaurant - had a very poor rating? Would you boycott it or continue using it?

Well, I'm not going to bore you.

Or maybe I am. You see, a few weeks ago, I received an approach to do a review and I accepted. I accepted because it was for a brand with which I have had a chequered history over time. I assumed that because they were approaching bloggers to do a review that they had got their act together.

After I had said yes, I realised that when they said they had approached bloggers, they had asked just about everyone in the parent blogging community. Review after review started to appear and I'm sure that readers who read a lot of parent blogs got very bored. Not only that, my fears were founded as many had dreadful experiences there and the best seemed to have had an OK experience, but nothing terribly great. Actually, excuse me, I think I read one completely positive review.

I had committed to doing this review so I feel I should write it. However, I'm not really sure what I can add to what's already been said but here goes.

The brand that offered me the opportunity was Frankie & Benny's, and as I said, we have a chequered history. We have had extremely slow service at times and instances of substandard food that the staff have tried to conceal, but at other times, they have been great. Our last visit had been disastrous, but nothing to do with them because Monkey was sick in the toilets shortly after we arrived. The staff were troopers and even arranged for our breakfasts to arrive at different times so one of us could sit outside with an improving by the minute 7 year old.

We chose to return to the same branch to do our review, not because we liked it so much but because it was at the Trafford Centre and we chose to meet husband there after he'd finished his marathon. The area was rammed that day because of the appalling weather, but Frankie & Benny's itself wasn't too busy. The main purpose of our review was to try out one of the four new menus. As it was a Sunday afternoon, we couldn't try the lunch or the breakfast menu so we tried the specials menu.

The kids are always well catered for with activity packs full of things that they really want to do. They love the kids menu which is £3.95 for main, dessert and a refillable drink - and it is not stingy at all. Missy Woo had the pizza because she knew that it's big - in fact, you'd expect it to be 3.95 by itself.

The specials menu was 2 courses for £10.95. Looking at the menu, it was struck by how unbalanced it was for vegetarians. All but one of the starters was vegetarian, but only one of the main courses was. This seemed strange as there were 10 choices for the mains. I was also a bit disappointed at the range of choices. - 4 pizza type dishes, 4 chicken dishes doesn't leave a lot of room for variety. We chose dough sticks and chicken wings to share with the children to start, then a New Yorker and a chicken burger for mains. When the starters arrived, I discovered how hot the wings were - there is no way the children would touch them; my lips were still tingling 10 minutes later. The children enjoyed the doughsticks before their mains arrived.

What of our mains? Well, they were OK. They weren't fantastic burgers and I felt the portion sizes were a tad small. Still, husband was still full of running gels and water so didn't finish his main but his chips got plundered by the children and me. We moved onto puddings - well, I had some crumble and the children had ice cream. Again, nothing exceptional.

The service was as good as before. The staff were generally friendly and helpful and the children loved the waiter who did tricks with drink napkins when he brought your drinks. What they loved was the staff treated them like grown ups and chatted easily to them. What I found annoying was the birthday routine. If someone has a birthday, they turn the music right up, bring out a pudding, play happy birthday (presumably singing it) then Congratulations comes on over the speakers. It's annoying enough when you're having a quietish meal and want to talk to your family but this happened SIX times in one hour, two of them back to back. I mean, seriously? I know a birthday is special  but does the whole restaurant have to be subjected to it? I sat there dreading the volume knob increasing and if I'd heard Cliff one more time, I swear I couldn't be held responsible for my actions. The only other thing that grated was that after I handed over the voucher to pay, the waiter didn't say thank you and didn't come back to explain that they weren't going to give me the balance in vouchers. In fact, the waiter barely said thank you.

Would I go again? Possibly. I would go to eat from a different menu; the lunch menu is too restrictive when you consider the price. The children love it but I yearn for something a bit different and the food really was a bit samey on the specials menu. I'm happy enough to go for breakfast but that's it. I prefer to go elsewhere for family meals although we do go occasionally because the children do get well fed.

However, I know that we were lucky that had a decent experience, and that's my problem with this. Frankie & Benny's have a reputation for providing inconsistent service that is often slow for no apparent reason and that often translates itself to the food. When I was approached, I assumed that they had put some considerable effort into offering a more consistent standard of service across the board. How wrong I was. You won't have to look far to find reviews that are far from flattering. Which begs the question - why run this campaign? Why give a large number of bloggers the chance to review your brand when you know that in some branches, they may not have a good time? People are going to be searching the internet and finding some awful reviews which people will take note of as they are written by bloggers. And I don't get why they approached so many people to do this - there is such a thing as brand fatigue if it gets written about too much but it seems that they didn't think about this when planning their campaign.

I'm sorry if you're fed up with yet another review for this brand. I shall be more careful next time - I don't like doing something that everyone else is doing because well, it's boring really. What this campaign has proved to me is that quality is definitely better than quantity and that brands really need to be sure of their product before they offer it to bloggers to try.

(I was sent a £50 voucher to use on a meal to try out one of the four new menus. The branch didn't know we were coming, nor that we were paying by voucher until we had been given the bill. I have not been told what to write and all words and opinions are my own.) 

How to be made to feel like a bad mother in one easy move.

So the other day, I took the children to the Trafford Centre. I was trying to get them out of the way because we are having to deal with night shifts at the moment and it's better if the house is quietish during the day.

I decided to take them somewhere for lunch. It's a place we have eaten at before, and had coffee at a few more times. Mostly, they were pretty good although they have a fascinations for toilets and kept going to the toilet.

However, after the meal, they reached their boredom threshold very quickly and started to get up. I was trying to finish off my large coffee as quickly as I could and I'd asked for the bill, but they kept getting up and wandering around and I kept telling them to sit down.

Eventually, Monkey - for whatever reason - hid under a table but did so with his feet sticking out. I got up and called him quite sharply to get out and get up. And then the manager appeared. He got Monkey out of there and brought him over to the table and got Missy Woo to sit down. He smiled and half-winked at me and then proceeded to explain that they can't go running around because the waiting staff are carrying hot drinks etc. They said sorry and the guy went away. I paid the bill and couldn't get them out of there fast enough.

Now, I appreciate that the guy was a) explaining to them what is basic health and safety and b) trying to help me, but I walked away from that place feeling like an unfit mother and a bloody awful one at that. True, they weren't on their best day that day as they were a bit full of it and possibly we should have gone to the Food Court but it is a lively place anyway, I had been trying to control them, and it was only for a few minutes.

I almost feel too ashamed to go back now. Should I feel this way about it? I am normally pretty firm with my kids; they know where they stand with me but sometimes, they just have the devil in them and ignore what I say. This was one of those times. I'd be interested in your thoughts because I don't want to be the mother that can't control her kids.