So, off we went to Frankie & Benny’s new outlet in Cambridge Retail Park, Aylesbury. Now at this stage I need to explain myself, as after a visit to Frankie & Benny’s in some god forsaken retail park outside Coventry a couple of years ago I made a vow to myself of NEVER AGAIN!! And at the Sage’s great age he knows that NEVER is a very BIG word indeed. So, why was I off to sup at the forbidden trough? Well the Sagette had been nominated by her sister as a warm wonderful human being, or some such nonsense, and next thing you know there is a DJ from MIX 96 Radio (“MIX 96, The Voice of the Vale!”) at the door with a Frankie & Benny’s £40 plus a bottle of Champagne voucher with the Sagette’s gasping unbelieving tones broadcast live to the awe inspired denizens of Aylesbury Vale. Very nice too, and thank you to MIX 96 which is an excellent local radio station.
So rather than be a fully paid up member of the Grumpies I found myself in the company of the Sagette and her delectable sister going to have “Italian” food whilst being watched over by the pictures of dead Italians which line the walls of F & B. All this points to an American influence for if you look into the freezer displays at American supermarkets huge trays of frozen Lasagne with black and white pictures of at least one dead Italian on the front will alarmingly stare back at you. But as we approach this vision of Italy dreamt up by a marketing manager from Croydon the nagging thought occurred to me “Would FREE be too expensive a price at Frankie and Benny’s?”
This new branch of Frankie & Benny's New York Italian Restaurant and Bar is one in a chain of over 100 restaurants throughout the UK, run by the Restaurant Group PLC. The chain is styled as a fun 1950's American restaurant; it has a number of booths with red seats, old black and white photography and a bottle-lined bar in each restaurant. The food is marketed as authentic American / Italian cuisine. A story of the origins of the chain is given on its website: This outlines a 10 year old Sicilian boy Frankie Giuliani landing at Ellis Island, New York in 1924. They opened a restaurant and it prospered due to Mamma's home-style cooking. Frankie became lifetime friends with Benny and in 1953 Poppa retired. Frankie and Benny took over the business and the rest, as they say, is history. Well that’s just what it is; a made up story or the “Brand Story” as it is entitled on their website and it is as authentic as some of the stories I’ve read on made up Irish Whiskey, cider or Liquor brands, that is not true at all.
In fact, the first branch in Leicester was opened in 1995. There are also an additional three branches in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia.
However, according to a report in the Daily Mirror on 5th June 2008 the benevolent, paternalistic Italian image is bogus in more ways than one;
“Staff at the Restaurant Group, owner of Frankie & Benny's, Chiquito, Garfunkel's and Blubeckers, are being ordered to encourage credit card rather than cash tips - or face the sack. Why? Because the group pays below the £5.52 adult minimum wage and uses credit card tips to top up salaries. It's legal thanks to a loophole in the minimum wage rules. But it's not moral.
Restaurant Group staff keep cash tips, but a notice recently circulated to them makes clear it would prefer customers to leave credit card tips. "It is essential that the customer is offered the opportunity to leave gratuity via chip-and-pin," says the notice. "Not offering this facility means you could be encouraging the customer to leave a cash tip." The notice goes on to state this could "contravene" company policy and "is likely to lead to disciplinary action and possible dismissal". The Restaurant Group made pre-tax profits of £43.5million last year with boss Andrew Page trousering more than a million.” The fact that staff don't actually get the tips left is a lose / lose for customers - why make an effort if all you are going to get is the minimum wage anyway?
The menu sounds great. Some classic Italian dishes and some classic New York dishes and then some funky twists added in here and there. You've got your typical pasta dishes, lasagne, Bolognese, Alfredo and there are the typical burgers and chips and Pizza / Calzones. There is also a brunch and a lunch menu for smaller meals. Prices aren't fast food cheap but they're not overly expensive at first glance either. Most main meals cost around £8.95 or £5.95 off a lunch menu. However if a family is going in for a 3 course meal plus drinks then you could end up spending a small fortune.
Some thought has gone into the setting although it is all very derivative - An old style American diner feel but with a self conscious “lay it on with a trowel” Italian overlay. The toilets are usually papered with old New York papers and they talk to you in Italian in them (apparently quite confusing if you've had too much to drink). You can see where the chefs are cooking as its an open style kitchen, as a consequence you do get a lot of the kitchen noise but the 50's music will drown this out. Lighting is always quite dim, even during the day as the furnishings are rather dark.
There is a good selection of alcoholic beverages, a good cocktail menu and a sophisticated looking bar. However a word of caution – many of the Cocktails use “pre-mix” concoctions and the Strawberry Daiquiri uses tinned strawberries so they taste very plastic, also the bar staff are not really up to speed or well trained. Drinks are uniformly expensive, particularly given the lack of quality in the contents of the cocktails. They do a children’s pack, with crayons and a colouring book for parents that would like a quiet chat that is free for every child. Some idea of the target C and D demographics of the customers they are aiming at can be gained from this advert from a local (horror of horrors!) stretch limo company.
“A Frankie & Benny's VIP Limo Party starts from £225 plus VAT (party of eight). Price includes a chauffeured limo transfer from school or home to the restaurant with a formal introduction to the restaurant manager. A two-course party tea (including drinks) is served at your decorated VIP party table. Finally, you enjoy the limo journey home again. Just watch the proud faces on mums and dads as their VIP's arrive home by limo.” Proud Chav faces indeed as they hand over £225 plus VAT to “entertain” the spoilt monsters!
Chav VIP's?
When we arrived the Sagette announced to the waiter that we had booked (to let them know we were the special MIX 96 people!) but that didn’t register with the Polish waiter who showed us to an unsuitable table considering one of the party was walking with crutches after an operation. Where he then showed us to was equally unsuitable as it was a tight booth but we sat down rather than bring him over again. We were left with menus and it took 15 minutes for him to come back to take our order and a further 15 minutes for the champagne to be served and 35 minutes for the starter to arrive. This left plenty of time to look at the workings of the 2 chef kitchen whose inhabitants seem to have signed up here because they could express their creative flair better than at Little Chef!
They seemed to spend most of their time arguing with the waiters who obviously had meals going out incomplete, in the wrong order or too slowly. In fact kitchen is a bit of a misnomer for while steaks, burgers, fish etc; are cooked on a charcoal grill the food offer obviously comes in pre-prepared and is mostly heated in ovens or kept in bains Marie. So for instance, if you didn’t want mushrooms with your pasta sauce this wasn’t possible as “that’s the way it comes.” So we played safe and ordered the “Sharing Platter” and then respectively a Rack of Ribs, a burger and “herby potatoes” and a Quarter Chicken on Mash.
The sharing platter
The sharing platter is described on the menu (for £11.95) as “a giant feast of our house favourites; chicken strips, BBQ chicken wings, fully loaded potato skins, spicy onion rings, bread sticks and garlic ciabatta. Served with a selection of delicious dips and crunchy celery sticks. Four of everything, ideal for families!” Well it is as described but everything on it could have been bought in the freezer section of Tesco’s except for the 4 grissini and the small celery sticks. It comes with 4 small cardboard tubs of sauces. These tubs are popular because my rack of ribs came with coleslaw in one of these small tubs. It is served with fries and half a corn cob but didn’t come with the butter for the corn and the extra barbeque sauce shown on the menu. For £12.95 I kept imagining the “chef” taking the plastic vacuum packing off it shortly beforehand, it certainly didn’t have the fresh taste you get in America. The herby fries with the somewhat overdone burger covered most of the plate and once again were pure Tesco freezer cabinet. The chicken was dry with that strange colour you get when they paint it with food colour to give that corn fed / nicely roasted look but of course this hadn’t been anywhere near a rotisserie. Cucina Italiano it wasn’t and indeed at £10.95 the chicken worked out at twice what a similar (but tastier) dish would cost in Nando’s.
It took some time for the pleasant but overworked and linguistically challenged Polish waiter to come back to clear, drop down the desert menu and then take our order. I asked for an espresso macchiato (spotted with milk) and was amused when he said that couldn’t be done as all around on a frieze on the walls there are key Italian foodie words and the word “Macchiato” was behind his head. The manager worked out how to do it on the machine which looks like a proper espresso machine but is in fact an automatic machine with pre-sets. The coffee was just OK as they normally taste out of a machine. One of the party ordered (for old time’s sake) a Knickerbocker Glory which was standard enough except it was awkward to eat as the chunks of fruit were too large. The best part of the meal was the perfectly acceptable bottle of Mercier champagne which was very drinkable at £20 a bottle, but was just put on the table without an ice bucket.
For the shared starter, 3 mains, one desert and coffee and the champagne the bill came to £72 against which we offset £60.00 on our voucher. Now it may seem ill tempered to complain about a free meal but the truth is the indifferent service, delays and the fact that the food was supermarket freezer quality and the ambience of Frankie & Benny's very plastic "Little Italy" impersonation did not make for a sense of occasion or an enjoyable evening and if I had paid the full price I would have resented it. But there is more for the next day all three of us were very “gastrically challenged!” So when it comes to Frankie & Benny's there are times when FREE is still too expensive and when NEVER is not too big a word. Ciao and Arrivederci Frankie and Benny for your “Brand Story” is going to continue without me!
If you are in Aylesbury Town and want to check out honest, simple Italian fare then check out Buon' Amici. It is full of noisy live Italians who strangely don’t feel the need to add lustre to their offer by putting pictures of dead Italians on the walls. It also serves the best coffee - La Passione Del Caffe as they say themselves!
http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/buon-amici.html
The Antidote
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