Est Est N'Est

After weeks (well, days) (well, hours) of planning, excitement reached fever pitch tonight as we headed off to Est Est Est in Didsbury to celebrate one of Nikki's colleagues leaving the firm.

We were the first there, so we bought some drinks (the first shock of the evening - £3.25 for some up itself Italian lager) and found some stools in sight of the door to wait for the rest of the party. A good turn out was expected (it's only a small firm) and by 7pm were were all assembled barring a few stragglers.

The waitress showed us to our table - a rather strange affair with a lit glass table top which looked as though it was made from a thin slice of rock from Treak Cliff Cavern. A kind of translucent volcanic yellow colour. The fact that it was lit below posed a problem for us lager drinkers, since if we stood our beer on the tabletop it would be warm in no time. Nikki, sat near the middle of the long table (which was actually the point where two tables had been pushed together) was OK as she had a larger expanse of wood to set her beer on. I elected to sit mine on my folded napkin.

A few minutes later this proved to be a mistake, as I took a drink and put the glass back on the napkin while talking to someone on the other side of the table. I didn't notice I'd rested it on the fold, and when I removed my hand the glass pitched forward and smashed itself to pieces on the table top.

Luckily there wasn't much beer left in it!

Starters arrived. Nikki had ordered field mushrooms roasted with Italian sausage, which proved to be very nice. My order was cold pasta salad with smoked salmon, roasted sweet potato & roasted onion, which would have been fine except for the fact there was no smoked salmon in it. Nikki's main course wasn't much better - chicken caesar salad. When it arrived, it was exactly the same size as the starter version (but twice the price), the dressing was just mayonnaise rather than caesar dressing, there was no parmesan and the chicken was as dry and stringy as leather. One other diner had ordered the same dish, and they both complained. The manager's idea of sorting the problem was firstly to talk to only one of the complainants (in this case, not Nikki) and secondly to offer more chicken! First class people skills in action. My main was a bit off too. Skewered beef, chicken and sausage with saffron risotto. The italian sausage was delicious, but the chicken looked like it was made from all the dirty bits off the same one that went into Nikki's "caesar" salad and the beef was as tough as old boots and riddled with fat.

The desserts were OK, but we left two very dissatisfied customers even though they agreed in the end to knock the caesar salad off our bill. Definitely won't be going there again.