When away last week, looked for somewhere to eat one night and being late I opted for a big pub chain restaurant…bit tired so I opted for something they couldn’t bugger up and decided on bog standard fish and chips. It arrived…looked ok, so tried a chip..ok, tried the fish, not bad…tried the garden peas…ice cold and still frozen…called a staff member out and he took it away..came back nearly ten minutes later with the same chips and the bite out of my original fish….now tepid.
I said it was inedible …told I could have a new one if I paid again…..’Pay again’…I said ….’I’d mention that ‘advice’ in my column’…….now I don’t have a column, but it gave him something to think about as I walked out…..by the look on his face.

Shud of upgraded to microwave mushy peas.
Welcome back.

Same to you Kev, I’m getting too old for short notice ‘adventures’.

if you want to eat out just go somewhere you have been before and found it fine. might be boring but at least you avoid a row due to the food not being to your liking. get sick of people telling me, the person who pays the bill, how my food should be. I want it cooked especially veg that i do not want to break my teeth on chewing them. Got to the point now when i meet up with an old school mate we just go to a pub and not a restaurant for a meal anymore.

Handy if you know the area, I didn’t.
Of two pubs we used regularly before when through there, one had surprisingly closed and the other one had new owners with a truly poncey menu at poncey prices.
After that you’re navigating a minefield.

i,m more limited that you as i have a garlic allegy so thats the majority of the menu out to start with especially if they call themselves a bistro. even worse i cannot stand the smell of other peoples food who have that in it. thought once i was safe ordering chicken soup till it was served up. i,ve more or less given up now eating anything out apart from toby carvery and headland cafe when i come up for a match.

The cost of eating out even a carvery has gone through the roof, high energy costs and inflation being blamed but both have dropped substantially but the menu prices haven’t,

I suspect some business’s have tried to get their Covid losses back but ‘forgot’ to settle for just getting their losses back and kept prices high.

feel they have used the increased costs as an excuse as prices went up before these happened anyway. its not just eating establishments but even places run by volunteers have done the same.

Air fares the same, high oil prices was the reason, oil price dropped but the fares remain high, the long haul flights are busy, why reduce the fare. No difference food prices, we complain but continue to buy the produce, simple example tin of Heinz beans a couple of years ago 60/70 pence now £1.40, what pushed the price to that level, big enterprises take the public for mugs.

Always been the same … oil prices go up like a rocket and come down like a feather.

Accrington Fan, you are the first person i have come across, who like me hates the taste and smell of garlic.
You have made my day because most people i know seem to love the froggie shite, including my grandson who informs me it is good for his heart.I tell him it is only good for a French persons heart, he says i am a racist, hes only 14.
Like you i rarely eat out, the Toby near me has gone downhill, likewise Weatherspoons, you can tell im a gourmet.
I seem to live on baked beans, cheese and mushrooms on toast with lashings of vinegar, followed by my all time favourite a Tesco currant bun.Yum yum, pigs bum.

Beans on toast used to be a poor person's food.
Now it's just toast.
Covid n war in Ukraine!.
I think not.
Just complete piss taking greedy bastads.

Always been the same … oil prices go up like a rocket and come down like a feather.[/quote]

Beans on toast used to be a poor person's food.
Now it's just toast.
Covid n war in Ukraine!.
I think not.
Just complete piss taking greedy bastads. [/quote]

On the money again Kev

Classic example is the Fish and Chip shops, prices used to go up because they were having to pay more for new potatoes but never came back down again.

Toby Carvery always wound me up….turn up, get you fed and get you out as quick as possible.
People filling their plates to the maximum like pigs at a trough…the fecking plates should have a ship’s Plimsoll Line painted on the side to stop it capsizing under the weight of it’s ‘cargo’.
Not so much a restaurant, more a food pit stop.

it does not bother me how much people pile their plates up its what they leave on them that winds me up. really hate to see waste food as i was brought up to eat everything especially when i was always asked what i wanted. my ma had enough of her childhood when she was forced to eat what she was given whether she liked it or not.

no we are not unique if you ask around. did not realise there were so many of us about when you talk. her in the kitchen is exactly the same. makes me laugh as all this foreign muck is regarded as good for your health as if they lived years and years longer than we do. all food is health especially to a starving man. if there is a glut of a certain food it will be deemed to be health and the opposite if their is a shortage they cannot increase the price anymore. should be called the great food con.

When I was a kid my Mother never asked what we wanted to eat, we sat down as family and ate what she had cooked.

thank goodness mine remembered her bad experiance of that and brought us up a more sensible way and nobody likes everything. the difference now is kids sit down to what the delivery driver brings in the house they spent thousands on a kitchen extension and an industrial sized cooker.

My Mother was a very good cook so eating what was put in front of was always good, how many families now sit down at their dinner table and eat a meal as a family, I would say none with them eating of their knee from KFC, McDonalds and Pizza boxes with big glasses coke.

with a monster bag of crisps as a starter.

I always gaze in baffled wonder driving past Mc Donald’s at tea time and the queues.

Never ordered a take away in my life, we were all brought up by the Chief Engineer ( the old feller ) to cook for ourselves, also taught us to sew and other skills which came in useful to make you self sufficient…’opting out’ was never an option.
Even now we do our own meals apart from the occasional big meals…suits me perfectly.

you,ll get a shock to find out that there are a number about who never use the kitchen apart from the kettle or the microwave.know 3 like that and its 3 too many as both do not work full time in the house making that the excuse.

I still have nightmares about cheap grey mince and tatties for Sunday lunch, regularly being sat out in the back yard with the plate still in front of me till I finished it so the kitchen could be cleaned up and everything put away. I'm convinced that cows these days are bred without gristle that they had back in the 70s!

Today I have a mutton curry in the oven on low, a chilli in the slow cooker and a lasagne made waiting to go in the oven later. Batch cooking is the only way with energy prices as they are.

Something I never ever remember eating as a kid, crisps, not sure they were ‘invented’ in my day and age, I still don’t eat crisps today.

Heinz beans and soup, what a rip off! These are meant to be cheap and cheerful fill ups, not luxury food.

Come on Jamie, of course they were invented unless you flew off on holiday in a Zeppelin.
Remember Chipmunk Crisps, Tudor Crisps, even Hoggets Crisps, classed as a treat as a kid…nowadays throw away nothings, that’s because access to sweets, crisps etc were occasional treats…..not part of your everyday diet.

Heinz products aren’t that good anymore in my opinion and their prices are ridiculous when own brand products are just as good nowadays.
Found out the Aldi’s own brand soups are made by Baxter’s.

buy heinz and half the money you spend is just for its name. funny how the cheaper stuff tastes better or as good but that could be down to the money you save. we actually buy many products cheaply because they are on or near to that stupid sell by date. neither of us have had any problems eating them but so many fall for the bollocks of the manufacturers and would not touch them in fear of death by best before dates.

The Father in law thought the ‘use by’ dates were when you could start using them. I kid you not.

with a monster bag of crisps as a starter.[/quote]

Something I never ever remember eating as a kid, crisps, not sure they were ‘invented’ in my day and age, I still don’t eat crisps today.[/quote]
Come on Jamie, of course they were invented unless you flew off on holiday in a Zeppelin.
Remember Chipmunk Crisps, Tudor Crisps, even Hoggets Crisps, classed as a treat as a kid…nowadays throw away nothings, that’s because access to sweets, crisps etc were occasional treats…..not part of your everyday diet.[/quote]



Holidays were a day on beach with sandwiches full of sand no matter how hard you tried sand always got into them. Crisps might have been invented but my Mother never bought them, everything we ate was home made apart from chocolate biscuits, my mother was an excellent home baker and cook.

apart from the obvious exceptions i think most people over 50 will think the same now. with all these cooking programmes we have and fancy cookers installed as a must have you,d think it would be todays youngsters and not us who would be bragging about what mother makes. doubt they could start a meal on the stuff ours had to use and will never eat the delights of toast thats been toasted on a coal fire with that death sentance butter spread thickly on it. used to love crisps where we had the opportunity to use that little blue bag of the other death sentance salt if you wanted or the amount of it.

Something I never ever remember eating as a kid, crisps, not sure they were ‘invented’ in my day and age, I still don’t eat crisps today.[/quote]
Come on Jamie, of course they were invented unless you flew off on holiday in a Zeppelin.
Remember Chipmunk Crisps, Tudor Crisps, even Hoggets Crisps, classed as a treat as a kid…nowadays throw away nothings, that’s because access to sweets, crisps etc were occasional treats…..not part of your everyday diet.[/quote]



Holidays were a day on beach with sandwiches full of sand no matter how hard you tried sand always got into them. Crisps might have been invented but my Mother never bought them, everything we ate was home made apart from chocolate biscuits, my mother was an excellent home baker and cook.[/quote]
I know the feeling, our old girl was the cook at Rossmere school.

I am off to Verills at lunchtime.

wish they,d open a branch down my way they,d make a fortune as they ar all asian owned bar one and thats as crap as the others. if i want them its off to morrisons things are that bad.

A half lot at Verills is now up to £5.90 now but in my opinion its still worth it. It tasted great.

Still the best fishshop in town and still the best portions and still the cheapest.

I tried the large fish a couple of months ago.
jeeeez, too much to eat, but too good to leave

thats at least a quid cheaper than a normal portion down my way where the fish are the same size and many of the chips are inedible. £5.90 does sound a lot but then times have changed and you cannot get 4 gallons of petrol for a quid anymore or a cup of tea for 3d.

Pineapple Fritters with Beetroot and Mushy Peas. Yummy.