Frankie and Benny's - never again! (Frankie & Benny's)

Member Name: MissTierney

Product:	Frankie & Benny's
Date:	22/05/09 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: if they are quiet the food will be good

Disadvantages: if they are busy the food will be undercooked, bad customer service

In the last couple of months i have visited both the Rubery branch and the Altrincham branch of Frankie and Benny's.
On both occasions i was very disappointed for different reasons in each place, and felt completely ripped off.

The theme of the restaurant is clearly 'American Diner' style. It is quite pleasing to the eye, and the music they play in the background is 50's style, Frank Sinatra and others.
The 'frankie & benny's' brand is well known. I've always likened it in my mind to T.G.I Fridays. They are similar in brand style, theme, food, and pricing.

My visit in Altrincham;
The restaurant is fairly small in comparisson to other branches. It is located right next to the cinema so i imagine they draw in a lot of custom from the people who visit the cinema. It was a sunday night however, and there was jusy myself with my partner, and maybe two other tables of people.
Me and my partner ordered our food and drinks, which came within around 10 - 15 minutes, the food was good. No problems at all at this point, in fact a pleasant experience so far.
During our meal i remembered i had a £5 off voucher in my wallet, and got it out to check it was still valid/in-date. It was - great! The waitress came and took our empty plates and disappeared with them. After around 5 minutes i called her to the table to give her the voucher and ask for my bill. The waitress did not make any attempt at covering up how much of a hassle this was for her, she walked off with it and started whispering to the man on the till who i assumed to be the manager (the till was directly beside us, and i made a point of watching her as i saw the frustration in her face as i gave her the voucher)
I can only assume by this reaction, that the staff put your order through the till at the time you order your food, and that it must be a difficult task for them to either void the transaction or apply a discount. So advice would be to anyone with a voucher - tell the staff you have a voucher before placing your order.
After our meal we went to sit at the bar for a drink, we ordered a strawberry margharita and a bottle of lager. The waitress charged us around £5 more than the advertised prices of the drinks. We called the waitress back and explained our confusion with the price we had paid, she apologised and said she had charged us for a jug of margharita rather than a glass, and duly called for help with refunding us from the till (voids and refunds aren't easy in this place as we found out twice on this occasion!)

My visit in Rubery;
Very big place compared to the last. It was fairly busy as it was a saturday afternoon. Me and my friend were seated and ordered our food. I believe the price was around £25 for two meals and two soft drinks. The service was good, nice waiter with plenty of smiles. The food arrived really quickly, in around 5-10 minutes. We soon found out why. The chips were raw, they tasted like raw potato and were very undercooked. I had bacon steaks which were full of water and my plate ended up drenched with my raw chips floating around.
The staff were obviously very busy so we just decided to leave, feeling hungry, and ripped off.

I would not choose to dine at Frankie and Benny's again from the experiences i have had. Far too unreliable and inconsistent.

Summary: its hit and miss - miss too many times for me personally though!