Posts Tagged ‘lunch’

A few years ago, while I was working up in Harrogate, my friend Alan and I refined the art of pub lunch. At Buzz, Jason and I achieved pub week, which was no mean feet. However, we could only dream of the system Alan and I put in place. Sometimes with other colleagues, sometimes not, we got it down to a schedule.

This went on for months. We managed two team lunches in my current team this week. That was great, but I can only dream of the glory days…

Recently, a new lunch place specialising in jacket potatoes opened across the road from our office, named Jackpots.

I tried it out last week, though I wasn’t overly impressed. The potato was nice and the toppings were OK, but I think a few key problems let them down. First of all, you can’t build your own potato. They have a few toppings you can select a combination of, otherwise you have to go for a “set menu” style. In an age of Subway and Barburrito, it would be much better if they could just lay them all out and you could pick any combination.

Secondly, I don’t think the containers they give them out in. They’re like the noodle boxes you get from Wokon. They do fold out to form a flat surface, but they don’t do this very well and that is equally annoying as it has no edges. Give me an old fashioned takeaway box any day.

I hope people in the office didn’t think this was all for one lunch.

Last Friday, myself and Elina went to Miah’s Kitchen for lunch.

You can see my Miah’s Kitchen review over on Know Leeds for a full low down on the food, but the short answer is that I recommend it! But that isn’t what I want to talk about here.

When we arrived, we were the only people there. They had at least three waiters working, but no customers. It didn’t look like they would be getting any either – they only open 12-2, and this was at nearly 1pm.

Yet, as we walked in and I asked for a table for two, the waiter replied “do you have a reservation?”

I almost wondered if he was taking the piss at first. It wasn’t a small place – they probably had about fifty covers, all of which were laid out but empty, why ask if we had a reservation? But I just said “no”.

Then, even funnier, they asked us to take a seat in the waiting area while they found us a table :D. We obliged and soon enough they had found one for us.

They were all very nice, though it did seem a rather formal procedure for a restaurant without any other customers.

Apparently, in there, every day is Friday. Except for us, it was a Monday. But now that me and Elina work over the road from each other, and TGI Friday’s is just next door, we decided to try it out for lunch (I have been to TGI before, but not in the past 15 years, which is quite a long time lol).

We both went for the ribs, which were good, but then given how close we live to Cattle Grid, it was always doomed to leave us a little disappointed. It didn’t help that they had run out of the beer glaze sauce, so we had to have the regular.

Service wasn’t too snappy either, so ended up getting back slightly late. It is otherwise very convenient for lunch though.

I don’t keep a great deal of food at home. My freezer is always full of stuff, and I have some backup tins in my cupboard, but beyond that, I have to specifically go out and buy food to put in my fridge. The reason is, it never really seems to get eaten.

Taken my recent weekend for example. On Saturday afternoon I went for lunch with Raby. We hit up Las Iguanas which is always a pleasure and it was great to catch up with Raby as it’s been quite a while since we’ve met.

In the evening, we hit Sam’s Chop House, then on Sunday afternoon, I headed over to parents for lunch before hitting up Humanist Community on Sunday evening – which may well have set a new record for attendance.

With Blackhouse offering 40% off your food bill this month, I decided to take Elina there for lunch.

Despite being tempted by the Kobe steak given the discount, I eventually settled for a nice rump steak while Elina went for the posh surf and turf. As usual the steak was cooked to perfection, though I was a little disappointed by the rest of the experience. The steak knives didn’t cut the steak very well and sitting directly under the low hanging lights made for an uncomfortably warm dining experience. Still, always a pleasure to eat there.