Best Chain restaurant?

[5harp3y]

Miguel Alvarez said:

BrabusMog said:

Miguel Alvarez said:

BrabusMog said:

Bullett said:

Miguel Alvarez said:

In fact where would you guys suggest for a nice meal out in the Camberley area. I'm back there once a week.

El pic on the A30 - Excellent Tapas
Also the Thai place just up the road for there is fine.
Both are sort of set back from the road and close to the RMA main gate.

Oh yes, very good shout on El Pic - forgot about that place!

I'm trying to picture it from the map. It's on the corner where the job centre is/was?

It's a bit further up from the job centre but it is on that one way street.

Cool. I'll have a wander into town next time I'm at the rents and give it a go.

Camberley Tandoori (further up a30 by the Agincourt club / mcdonalds) is excellent too

[zetec]

What's peoples view on Brown's? I have never been disappointed at the Shad Thames branch and have a booking at the Victoria branch for this Wednesday.

[blindswelledrat]

Disastrous said:

I find chain restaurants almost uniformly depressing.

Before we even get to the food, I'm broken by the bulk-bought 'authentic' tat stuck to the wall, the garish lighting, the loud music, the subtly 'antiqued' tiles that are plastic on closer inspection, the 'randomised' montage of newspaper cuttings wallpaper in the toilets that repeats itself exactly every 0.5 metres, the blaring of whatever vacuous ephemeral bks Radio 1 decided should be in the charts this week etc etc.

I find them to be bleak beyond words and simply can't enjoy a meal in that environment.

Life is too short and there are too many good restaurants out there to bother with chains IMO.

That said, honourable mention to Wagamama, Lobster & Burger and Jamie's Italian for at least not feeling like chains and having decent food.
.

Excellently described.
I have never understood the popularity of places like TGI. THey are not cheap enough to be almost fast food, so in order to go there you are paying almost the price of an actual meal somewhere. WHy would you?

[TwigtheWonderkid]

5harp3y said:

Camberley Tandoori (further up a30 by the Agincourt club / mcdonalds) is excellent too

That's my problem. I'd avoid that like the plague because of it's name. Talk about lazy. What a marketing meeting that must've been in the planning stage.

"Right, we're opening a Tandoori restaurant in Camberley....any suggestions? How about you come up with something Raj, after all, when you moved into your bungalow you came up with a great name, what was it again?"
"The Bungalow. Great isn't it. very proud of that. Right, leave it with me. A tandoori in Camberley, give me a couple of days and I'll nail it!"

Any restaurant that shows such a lack of imagination over its name I would have expected to serve very dull food.

[Miguel Alvarez]

5harp3y said:

Miguel Alvarez said:

BrabusMog said:

Miguel Alvarez said:

BrabusMog said:

Bullett said:

Miguel Alvarez said:

In fact where would you guys suggest for a nice meal out in the Camberley area. I'm back there once a week.

El pic on the A30 - Excellent Tapas
Also the Thai place just up the road for there is fine.
Both are sort of set back from the road and close to the RMA main gate.

Oh yes, very good shout on El Pic - forgot about that place!

I'm trying to picture it from the map. It's on the corner where the job centre is/was?

It's a bit further up from the job centre but it is on that one way street.

Cool. I'll have a wander into town next time I'm at the rents and give it a go.

Camberley Tandoori (further up a30 by the Agincourt club / mcdonalds) is excellent too

TwigtheWonderkid said:

That's my problem. I'd avoid that like the plague because of it's name. Talk about lazy. What a marketing meeting that must've been in the planning stage.

"Right, we're opening a Tandoori restaurant in Camberley....any suggestions? How about you come up with something Raj, after all, when you moved into your bungalow you came up with a great name, what was it again?"
"The Bungalow. Great isn't it. very proud of that. Right, leave it with me. A tandoori in Camberley, give me a couple of days and I'll nail it!"

Any restaurant that shows such a lack of imagination over its name I would have expected to serve very dull food.

Lol Twig - I do know what you mean.

It's alright from memory although its been a while. There was a nice ish one on the Frimley road as well just down from the petrol station although that's probably changed hands.

[BrabusMog]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

5harp3y said:

Camberley Tandoori (further up a30 by the Agincourt club / mcdonalds) is excellent too

That's my problem. I'd avoid that like the plague because of it's name. Talk about lazy. What a marketing meeting that must've been in the planning stage.

"Right, we're opening a Tandoori restaurant in Camberley....any suggestions? How about you come up with something Raj, after all, when you moved into your bungalow you came up with a great name, what was it again?"
"The Bungalow. Great isn't it. very proud of that. Right, leave it with me. A tandoori in Camberley, give me a couple of days and I'll nail it!"

Any restaurant that shows such a lack of imagination over its name I would have expected to serve very dull food.

You're not going to like the name of the tandoori restaurant in College Town then

[zygalski]

I can thoroughly recommend any of the Gordon Ramsay restaurants.

[blindswelledrat]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

That's my problem. I'd avoid that like the plague because of it's name. Talk about lazy. What a marketing meeting that must've been in the planning stage.

"Right, we're opening a Tandoori restaurant in Camberley....any suggestions? How about you come up with something Raj, after all, when you moved into your bungalow you came up with a great name, what was it again?"
"The Bungalow. Great isn't it. very proud of that. Right, leave it with me. A tandoori in Camberley, give me a couple of days and I'll nail it!"

Any restaurant that shows such a lack of imagination over its name I would have expected to serve very dull food.

Good work

[Bullett]

BrabusMog said:

You're not going to like the name of the tandoori restaurant in College Town then

Or the one in Sandhurst (my local, which is actually pretty good).

The one in Camberley used to be a Gurkha run place and was a bit different to your normal Indian. I loved it but obviously not enough other people did.

[Chris Type R]

p1doc said:

i like spur steakhouse and find frankie and benny's fine-kids meals always good esp their puddings lol
martin

Spurs are ok in South Africa - diabolical in the UK.

[The Mad Monk]

Disastrous said:

I find chain restaurants almost uniformly depressing.

Before we even get to the food, I'm broken by.... the loud music,

Wetherspoons don't play any music!

[anonymous-user]

toasty said:

Wahaca is currently one of our lunchtime favourites - Mexican street food without the street. It might not be that authentic but it is damn tasty.

I had a fantastic meal in Wahaca a few weeks ago, fair play

[Mobile Chicane]

zetec said:

What's peoples view on Brown's? I have never been disappointed at the Shad Thames branch and have a booking at the Victoria branch for this Wednesday.

I'm a fan.

I've been going to the Brighton branch since I was a student there in the mid 1980s, and have been to a few of the others as well.

I've found these to be consistently good, no doubt due to the thought that's gone into creating a menu that's difficult for even the most inept minimum wage grill monkey to fk up.

[dugsud]

gd49 said:

dugsud said:

Totally agree....worst meal we've had in York....ever! Avoid at all costs!

We didn't like the York one as well! It wasn't terrible, but for the price it wasn't great and the portion size itself seemed very stingy,especially given the bulk of the ingredients was pasta which costs nothing.

My pasta dish was like a Morrisons ready meal....except not as good!

[matrignano]

Busaba Eathai, Byron, Franco Manca, Bodeans are not bad as far as chains go.

[hungry_hog]

Good:
Wahaca (best of the Mexican chains)
Byron (prefer to GBK, Meat Liquor etc)
Hawksmoor (best of the steak chains)
Gaucho
Busaba

Avoid:
Zizzi (always find the service terrible, average food)
Strada (ditto)
Nandos (bland chicken with peri peri to hide the blandness)
Prezzo (microwave pasta the only time I went!)
Bella pasta (tourist trap)

Edited by hungry_hog on Monday 3rd August 22:16

Edited by hungry_hog on Monday 3rd August 22:18

[wiggy001]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

That's my problem. I'd avoid that like the plague because of it's name. Talk about lazy. What a marketing meeting that must've been in the planning stage.

"Right, we're opening a Tandoori restaurant in Camberley....any suggestions? How about you come up with something Raj, after all, when you moved into your bungalow you came up with a great name, what was it again?"
"The Bungalow. Great isn't it. very proud of that. Right, leave it with me. A tandoori in Camberley, give me a couple of days and I'll nail it!"

Any restaurant that shows such a lack of imagination over its name I would have expected to serve very dull food.

This is the same reason you will rarely, if ever, see "Prawn Curry" on a menu. But change the name to "Mongolian Malabar Prawn Curry" and you can suddenly charge £20 for it. See also: "Heritage" vegetables and "MacDougal Farm" sausages...

[eskidavies]

O

acd80 said:

There's nothing wrong with Hard Rock Café. You know what you're going to get (was in the one in Venice a few weeks ago - it was the only place we could find that was baby friendly and the food was decent, albeit a bit on the pricey side - a pint of beer was about £8.50 however).

I've been in a fair few of them all over the world (Europe, North America, Middle East & the Caribbean) both on business and leisure travel to a) have a pint, b) get one of their fridge magnets and c) the odd dirty burger .

They are consistent with one exception - the one in London was bloody awful when I last went in there about 3 years ago. No excuse really as it was the one that started them all off...

Fully agree I used to frequent Cardiff HR a lot when it was open,been to Manchester ,Berlin ,Barcelona ,went to London what a pile of st ,was expecting something good it's crap ,waited by the bar could see I was going no where fast ,called the missus to leave and went to a pub round the corner.

[krunchkin]

Mobile Chicane said:

zetec said:

What's peoples view on Brown's? I have never been disappointed at the Shad Thames branch and have a booking at the Victoria branch for this Wednesday.

I'm a fan.

I've been going to the Brighton branch since I was a student there in the mid 1980s, and have been to a few of the others as well.

I've found these to be consistently good, no doubt due to the thought that's gone into creating a menu that's difficult for even the most inept minimum wage grill monkey to fk up.

Things may have changed but when I worked at the Brighton Browns in the 90s it did actually have a proper kitchen and a proper brigade of hard drinking chefs

[BJG1]

zetec said:

What's peoples view on Brown's? I have never been disappointed at the Shad Thames branch and have a booking at the Victoria branch for this Wednesday.

went to the one in Bank a lot with work and thought it was pretty ste. Goodman's next door though is fantastic.

Does Le Renais De Venise count? 3 in London, one in Paris and one in New York. Really good value, no menu, a walnut salad then 2 rounds of steak and chips in the best peppercorn sauce I've ever had.