Live from the Met

Didsbury isn't really my normal stomping ground but this Sunday afternoon (while recovering from an excellent and really quite silly party) I found myself in The Metropolitan, a very very large and exceedingly busy pub. For the lunchtime shift you have to negotiate your way past hoards of yummy mummies cooing sickeningly over their tiny spawn who are of course happily ensconced in their obligatory Bugaboos. It's that or bright young things being seen in the place to be seen - a balance which presumably tips more in their favour later in the evenings.

We were first told we'd have to wait a while for a table down at the back end of the place but miraculously a different one at the front became vacant and we pounced. Being crammed to the rafters this Sunday wasn't exactly making the staff happy - our initially rather surly waitress came and asked us if we wanted to order food and when we said "Yes" she wiped the table down and promptly took our menu away. Erm.... Helpful. However once our menus had been returned, a few other tables wiped down and the order had finally been taken and paid for (in advance mind) the time from kitchen to table was actually pretty quick. The menu clearly is carefully designed to make this an efficient ship.

The food is of typical pub variety but with a classy edge; soups, starters, roasts, burgers, and risottos (i.e. veg/pescetarian slops) each of which containing some kind of slightly fancy ingredient or other. The menu also has some "interesting" touches involving use of "quotations" like Sirloin of "Cheshire" beef and Risotto of "native" seafood. Quite where the seafood is "native" to was not mentioned and we tittered over the concept of mock-welsh lamb.

My burger was presented with a dollop of blue cheese, some tomato relish, a little salad and some much needed chips. Oh and the inevitable cocktail stick stabbed through its heart. The meat was perhaps a tad chewy but then this is supposed to be a posh burger made of nuggets of real meat and not factory scrapings. Steak hashé it ain't but it was just what I needed. It wasn't even over-cooked, with a bit of pink left in the centre - I hadn't specified or been asked how I wanted it doing though.

My fellow diners seemed pretty content with their selections and certainly very glad to be fed. With wallet ten pounds lighter and stomach much improved for being loaded back up I bade farewell to my ashen-faced companions, went back home and totally failed to get to sleep till 5am. Too much stuff churning in my head and general feelings of stressyness... waaaaa....