mrfrisky's Qype profile

If you're tired of over-elaborate hotel rooms and service offerings then you'll absolutely adore the York Central Micklegate Travelodge.  It's also ideal if you're keen on visiting the Reflex 80's bar, which is conveniently located right across the road.

You certainly wouldn't stay here under any other circumstances.  Although, in its defence, the shower worked.

There's not a great deal to say - the room was a basic rectangular affair, with 2 utilitarian coat hanging nubs protruding from the wall.  The end of the room featured a floor length curtain, suggesting perhaps a full-length window or maybe a small stage?  Bewilderingly, about 1/6th of the curtained off section contained a window, and the rest would be useful for snowboard storage, or, like, errm, something.



The breakfast was the famously bleak Travelodge breakfast experience - the perfect start to help you appreciate the rest of your day more.

Without intending to sound like complaining - the bed was possibly modelled on early York monastic fashions, when monks used to sleep 2 to a bed and it was imperative for one to stay awake at all times: whenever one bed occupant moves it's impossible for the other to remain asleep.  Equally, the hotel have gone for authentic period pillows - small cotton pucks resembling perhaps a Juicy Fruit, which you need 3 of in order to avoid permanent neck damage.  Sadly, you're only issued two, so it's vital to procure extras from the front desk before they run out.  Helpfully, the desk clerk offered us extra towels to roll up and sleep on in lieu.

Still - 2 stars, because it was better than the place we stayed last time.

So, from what we can gather, this place is located on the site of a former burrito joint - and its new incarnation is... a Spanish place, which does burritos!

(I'm reviewing this place purely on the strength of its burritos, by the way - couldn't comment on the rest of what's available, although the chicken looked nice from what we could see)

Fans of convenience and thrift will probably enjoy Padron if they work in the neighbouring area, but it's not somewhere that I'd seek out, as its burritos didn't make a lasting impression.  A great sign was that rather than the usual 3 or 4 filling options, Padron offers about 8 different possibilities: the chicken & chorizo option was a breath of flavoursome fresh air.  The rice they used was nicely cooked, without being crunchy or sloppy.  Our table service was speedy enough, without being friendly or memorable - but definitely not bad at all.  And quite keenly priced, it has to be said.

Things you might not like if you're a burrito enthusiast: it was a very sloppy burrito. Whether that's a property of the sour cream they use or some aspect of the sauce, I'm not sure.  They use orange cheese which is a little on the flavourless side.  And the biggie - you only pick the filling and the hotness of salsa you want.  Maybe it's a stupid expectation, but established burrito protocol is that you're given a choice of options, rather than saddled with chopped iceberg, diced tomato, and lashings of sour cream.

Like I said - nowhere near the worst burrito in the world (Mexicali in Soho still holds that lofty title), but certainly makes it worth the walk down to Tortilla in Leadenhall Market.

Probably the most upsetting thing though is that the window writing enticing people in is in Comic Sans MS typeface.  There's just no call for that sort of thing.

I was lucky enough to be given a free burrito voucher by the folks at Qype for Tortilla, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to pop into Leadenhall Market and try out what was on offer over there...

To start with, the whole setup was a little incongruous (a bit like looking at Egyptian artefacts in The Louvre): semi-authentic Mexican food in a 19th Century British building.

But I suppose what's important is the actual burritos, right?

Generous portions and a good tight tortilla wrap made this seem initially promising.  The touch of having tomato-flavoured rice was a good one, and helped ensure that the first mouthful of burrito was tasty.  In terms of actual menu offerings - the fare at Tortilla is in line with the usual range most places have; chicken, steak, pork, and vegetarian.

Unfortunately the chicken I had was fairly dry & stringy - they'd opted for shredded chicken, which is harder to keep moist than grilled chunks.  I wasn't watching the sauce distribution at the time, but it turned out that all of my spicy sauce ended up down one end of the burrito, meaning that I finished by chowing into a hot salty pocket.  And nobody wants that as a finishing gambit.

Tortilla's not bad - just a little more attention to detail, and it could have been actively good.  Still, it's the best thing in the area I've found so far.

It's hard to really know what the best part of a McDonald's visit is - we got back from the Bedminster branch about an hour ago, and I can say with honesty that I certainly don't feel like eating anything else for quite some time.

It's been so long since I've been to one - I'd forgotten the level of artistry that the place embodies.  The photographs of the food on the menus match the presented product only under the most exact lighting conditions and camera angles, and one can only wonder what the minimum concentration of actual potato particles are legally required in order to sell fries.

The beauty of a trip to McDonald's is no only with the food-based entertainment though - it's their unique take on what constitutes customer service.  Having been delivered a Chicken Legend with bacon & salsa with no bacon in it I returned it to the counter and informed them of the mistake.  The youth in charge snatched the sandwich away from the server and opened it up in front of me, flipping through the layers with his fingers like a rolodex, and then having established that I wasn't causing trouble, sent the sandwich out the back and ensured me that I'd get one with bacon.  It wasn't abundantly clear to me whether I'd been issued with a new sandwich, or had bacon inserted in the one the chap had fingered his way through.  Optimistically, I convinced myself it was the former as the limp squares of iceberg looked as if they were arranged differently to the one I'd previously inspected.  The customer is always wrong, I imagine.  To their credit, the server did apologise to me, and assured me that the crew there had been working very hard all day - serving not only the neverending queue of people at the till, but also the ceaseless stream of people demanding to have food delivered through their car windows outside.  No wonder the manager was so grumpy, poor thing.  It was probably getting on toward time for his nap.

I also enjoyed the spectacle of two barely-literate people trying to communicate in different thick regional accents (and failing), and resorting to a series of grunting and pointing at the pictures above the counter - so not just a promotional concern, but also a vital tool for understanding.

One couldn't complain about the view from the front window - it's a great place to watch the world go by.  I couldn't quite get a handle on what music was playing to the dine-in customers, as a near constant array of beeps and sirens emanated from the kitchen: at one point leading us to wonder whether the restaurant was being attacked buy spacecraft and had had its defensive forceshields knocked out.

An absolutely unforgettable meal.

Well, you can't say that there's a sense of humour failure in the land of lunchtime chain management.

It's brilliant - you conceive a chain of places that sell bland staple topped with overly-flavoured toppings, then rub a bit of health-based marketing on it to make it seem more worthy and take your mind off the fact that it's expensive middle-of-the-road slurry.

For example, in the 3 visits I've made to this place I've tried their breakfast quinoa mango pot thing (which is essentially an underdelivering posh rice pudding), superfood yogurt pot (unpleasant yogurt topped with a bunch of stuff you'd never put near yogurt in a million years), and red chicken curry (box of rice topped with vivdly coloured and very strongly flavoured shredded chicken sauce, cosied up to by some beans or vegetables or some such nonsense).

The common theme in everything I've seen come out of the building is that it's not so much "food", as "nutrition packs" - like you might feed to an astronaut, or prisoner.

But the glorious thing is they don't even try to pretend that it's anything other than nutrient paste - the place is called Pod!

Seriously though - Pod consistently over-promises and under-delivers, and tries to bamboozle you into eating there on the premise that it's somehow healthy, but doesn't go to the trouble of being enjoyable and certainly gives being cheap a wide berth.  

Their coffee's among the worst chain coffee I've ever tried (worse even than Costa) and makes one wonder whether they've only provided it as a cynical money-making add-on because they know that office workers will grab a coffee out of habit/convention without putting too much thought into what's in their cups.