I’ve known the Marble Arch pub for a very long time. I mean it’s been there since time began hasn’t it? Or at least since 1888 when it was built (according to sources on the Internet).

Many are the pub crawls I’ve made starting, ending or simply visiting at the Marble Arch.

The beer has always been well regarded. And there’s no doubt that if you want to see a proper old-fashioned pub the Marble Arch is a very good place to go to.

It’s built on a slope. Consequently if you enter via the side door you find yourself walking up hill. Now that is a slightly surreal experience.

The pub really has a genuinely lovely atmosphere. The amount of effort that the Victorians made to make a great pub really show in this one.

And of course the pub is really finished off by having great staff. Whenever I’ve gone there they’ve been very friendly.

I went there yesterday to eat with a friend and we both had fish(cod) and chips. You might think that’s boring but the Marble Arch chef managed to make them so the batter was light, fluffy and tasted wonderful. The cod arrived as melt in your mouth battered strips. And the chunky chips were so nice that I ate them all, despite actually being rather full.

I finished with a Manchester tart (I couldn’t have eaten the starter or I’m sure I would have exploded). The tart was light and covered in coconut. Again delicious! Rob, decided for the syrup sponge which looked scrumptious and was finished off nearly as quickly as I finished mine off.

And of course the beer was excellent. There’s no doubt that now they brew their own, the beer seems to be consistently good. All, in all a great pub that anyone could visit and enjoy.

Kay had been to the Peking Court on a night out with her sister some weeks back and wanted to take the whole family so we could see what we thought too.

The Peking Court is actually a Chinese buffet style restaurant where you go and choose whatever you want to eat from the buffet, including chips!

And the dessert is included in the very reasonably priced menu.

So once the kids were safely on holiday we checked the Peking Court’s web site for the opening times and ended up going about 3pm, which I think was the cheapest time, so that’s good.

We sat down and ordered our drinks and then we trotted off to a long, almost school cafeteria-like, stainless steel buffet unit set with lots of different dishes.

The dishes range from chips, through Peking duck to sweet and sour chicken to lemon chicken via beef, pork and vegetable dishes.

In with everything else were prawn toast, prawn crackers and spring rolls.

Everything was nice and hot and you could go back for seconds or even thirds if you had the capacity – I didn’t…

However, everything I chose was delicious. I had a large amount of very tasty sweet and sour, some lemon chicken and special fried rice with plenty of vegetables. I also felt duty bound to check the chips, which I can report were actually tasty and not dried up and greasy as I’d feared.

The children loved the prawn crackers and kept going back for more.

As for dessert there was a choice of banana fritter, cheese cake, chocolate cake and fruit or the whole lot.

I enjoyed the meal I had ( and I did go back for seconds). When we were there some of the dishes were at a low level and there was only a few bites of banana fritter left, so I got one small piece. However, I did notice that as we were leaving more food was being poured into the containers.

When we arrived it was deathly quiet as we were the only customers. However as the time progressed it began to fill up and became quite busy with a lot of people obviously enjoying the food there.

If you’re expecting high class Chinese cuisine you’ll be disappointed. However, if you want reasonably priced Chinese food that’s tasty the Peking Court is where you need to try next.

Rob Baker and I went out to lunch in the Manchester Trafford Centre.

Having checked out a couple of the restaurants in “The Orient” (the dining section), including it has to be said a couple of Chinese restaurants we plumped for La Tasca. The restaurant is part of a large restaurant chain that includes La Tasca, La Vi?a and Sam & Maxie’s bar/grills.

The original La Tasca where it all started back in 1993 is still in the centre of Manchester and where I first sampled tapas.

At the Trafford centre restaurant we were given ample time to check the menu by the friendly staff.

Eventually we chose the meat tapas at ?20, all in. The tapas selection allowed both Rob and I to try out lots of different foods.

My particular favourites were the Patatas Bravas which were melt in the mouth deep fried potatoes in a spicy tomato-based sauce and the garlic mushrooms (Champi?ones al Ajillo). And after Rob had described the Spanish Omelette as scrumptious “hot or cold” he made a beeline for it when it arrived and enjoyed the “Tortilla Espa?ola” which is the traditional potato & onion omelette. Rob finished off with a lovely looking Seville orange and chocolate cheesecake (Tarta de Queso, Chocolate y Naranja). By that time I’d had enough and was pleasantly full.

Overall the atmosphere was ok, the service friendly and unrushed and the food was reasonable, although nothing spectacular. Would I go again? Yes but I wouldn’t expect to be blown away by the experience.

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