Big Bite - Birmingham

Gareth's view: "Big Bite on Broad Street in Birmingham is not where you'd expect to find gourmet cuisine. And we didn't. But for just over 6 quid, a meal for two is pretty good value. I had two meat samosas and fries, Jen had the "Big Bite Lite" meal which consisted of fries, a drink and a HUGE piece of chicken.
My samosas were pretty good, microwaved to warm them up so a little floppy, but that's only to be expected in a fast food place. They were nicely spicy with plenty of meat and peas. The fries were better than I expected: hot, crispy and with barely any dodgy ones with eyes, random brown bits etc. (I'm a bit of a freak about chips. If they don't meet my very exacting requirements they are discarded.)
The whole place was remarkably clean, service quick and friendly, food hot, cheap and nice. Overall 8 out of 10."

Jen's view: We went to Big Bite as we needed somewhere quick and cheap to eat before going to the cinema. It definitely fulfilled these requirements. It is really cheap and the food is actually really nice. My chicken was lovely, even nicer than from the chicken shop around the corner from us which is hard to beat. So the food and price are excellent.

I did find myself getting a little stressed out eating in Big Bite due to the large groups of people fussing around and the noisy extractor fans. So it isn't the most relaxing place to eat on a Sunday night, but again this is to be expected really, in a fast food place! The only other downside is also to be expected in a fast food place, which is, that there really are no healthy options at all. My meal was the lite meal and it really wasn't lite. They have got lots of healthy drinks though, as they have lots of water and different fruit juices.

I would also give Big Bite 8/10.

Manor House - Solihull

Gareth's point of view: "The Manor House in Solihull is a tea room which from the outside looked quite posh, the effect was heightened by it being full of old people and middle class looking people with children (all dressed in beige naturally).
The menu although limited was what you'd expect from a tea room style place, not cheap but not a rip off either. The drill is that you find your table then queue to order your food. The queue moved fairly rapidly and the order was taken pretty efficiently. So far so good.
Unfortunately this was as good as the experience got. Between the order being placed and the food arriving glaciers crashed into the sea, empires rose and fell, etc. It took quite a long time.
I'd ordered Cottage Pie which came with Warm Onion Bread (Onion Bread?) and Salad. Jen had had a Jacket with Chicken Tikka.
Now when I order Cottage Pie in somewhere that looks posh and charges me nigh on a fiver for it I don't expect to get Smash (or similar) as the "potato" so imagine my surprise when, you see where I'm going? And the meat bit was a bit suspect too. Also I feel that salt and pepper is an integral part of the cooking process, the cooks at the Manor House seem not to. I did like the extra veg in it and it was hot though.
OK Onion bread and salad. The Onion bread had been put in a wet bit on the plate so was soggy, that's just not nice. The salad consisted of some Iceburg letuce and cress, and was wet, no dressing. Quite crap really. Oh and £1.10 for 200ml of sparkling water? Over all 2 out of 10: it was hot and I didn't die." Just over a tenner for reheated cottage pie and jacket with chicken tikka and too tiny bottles of water.

Jenny's point of view: Well, I did think that the Manor house was going to be a lovely place to eat...but I was wrong! We should have run out of the door the minute we saw the plastic bread sandwiches cut into triangles. Unfortunately we didn't.

I thought the queue moved very slowly and the food took a very very long time to arrive, who knows why as all they had to do was stick two things in the microwave.

When it did arrive, it wasn't really worth the wait. I had a jacket potato (microwaved) with chicken tikka. The chicken tikka was just a few pieces of not very tasty chicken. The salad was quite nice but as it was served on a side plate it kept falling off when I tried to eat the potato!

Gareth's glass also smelled like a fish tank-which was nice!

I think we will avoid the Manor house in future.

Right then...

Ok the intention of this new blog doo-hickie is to spread our opinions of places we have eaten, hopefully giving useful information. We always want reviews we can trust but can never find them. We'll both give our opinions hopefully giving a fair and balanced review.