Frankie and Bennys

Was here following a competition we won, we got the burger and chips with a dessert, I thought the burger wasn’t great at all, the burger was gristly in my opinion and sloppy, they poured on top of the burger what looked like black goo and it tasted awful, one of my worst burgers unfortunately because i had high hopes for Frankie and bennys, even worse it was our first time here, the chips were nice and crisp, I got ice cream and chocolate brownie and oh my it was the nicest brownie I’ve had, the ice cream was gorgeous and creamy. If I were to go back it would only be for a dessert.

Must say im here is defo a hit and a miss, but i stil keep coming back defo dnt cum as much as i use to because so many times its been bad
I came here on monday will wasnt i surpised the food was great and service was fantastic. Darren r waiter couldn’t do enough.
We tried the piza the American hot was nice for a wee change, also chicken strips r lovely
Thanks to Darren for great service and food we will be back next week

It’s a real hit or a miss in this restaurant one week you receive brilliant, fast service, beautiful food and cocktails then the next week it’s completely rubbish!!! I always give it the benefit of the doubt but lately everytime I’ve been it’s disappointing. My tip would be to go when it’s not busy because when it is your pretty much invisible.

Last week I had my first Christmas dinner of the year… complete with party hats and crackers! Never too early! Barry and I headed out with our friends Kieran and Emma-​Jane to have a Christmas get-​together and to try out the new Frankie & Benny’s festive menu.
We met at Victoria Square and were shown the menu which is 2 courses for £16.95 and 3 courses for £19.95.
For starters I went for the Mac ‘n’ Cheese cake, because I was really intrigued! It’s traditional mac ‘n’ cheese which has a crispy coating and was served with BBQ sauce and topped with winter coleslaw. I love mac ‘n’ cheese so enjoyed my first course.
Barry chose the smoked salmon bruschetta and was delighted to get three ciabatta crostini topped with salmon, lemon soured cream and rocket!
Kieran picked the pulled beef salad, while Emma-​Jane decided on the Buttermilk Chicken tenders. She really enjoyed the sauce it was served with, which turned out to be their signature salsa verde mayo. All very happy with the starters!
For mains I think we were all very tempted by the traditional Christmas dinner! A Christmas party isn’t complete without turkey or chicken right?! But in the end, we all decided to try something different to get a real feel for the menu.
Kieran stuck to his guns and went for the Festive Dinner which is half a roast chicken with pigs in blankets, stuffing balls, rosemary roasted potatoes, mixed vegetables and red wine gravy. What can I say about the Christmas dinner! It was huge and I don’t think he managed to finish it!
Barry went for his old favourite, the Bacon Cheese burger, which came with a side of chips served up in a brown paper bag as if they were from a traditional chip shop! An interesting touch!
Emma Jane decided upon the Maple flavour glazed gammon and fries, while I picked the dish which intrigued me the most again– the Mojito Salad! I’m not a huge fan of salad but anything that tastes like mojito is good for me! There were lovely flavours of mint, lemon and lime which came through.
After all that, we debated if we should go for the third courses. In the end I couldn’t resist! I picked the Peach and Raspberry Pie, while Emma-​Jane went for the Christmas fave, the Chocolate Yule log! The sweetness of the peach and the tartness of the raspberries really tickled the taste buds so I’m really glad I had the dessert. It was a great way to end.
Our total bill (for two 3-​course dinners and two 2-​course dinners as well as cocktails, coffees and soft drinks) came to just over £100. We all enjoyed it and it was great value for an early relaxed Christmas do with friends!

I quite like Frankie And Bennies — it’s not going to win any awards for its décor or give you amazing culinary experiences but what it does it does well and it’s great value for breakfast with even some reasonably healthy options.

If you like to dine surrounded by screaming kids whilst experiencing slow, unpleasant service and mediocre food then Frankie & Benny’s is the place to be. Even if you visit in the late evening you can eliminate the screaming kids, but you’ve still got the poor service and food.
You get the picture. I don’t like it and much to my horror I have a friend who really used to enjoy eating here. Therefore, unfortunately, I’ve dinned in Frankie & Benny’s quite a few times in the past.
However at a recent and final visit the food was exceptionally bland and staff exceptionally rude. Plus they refused to honour a Perks Card discount because we had not ‘declared’ it before ordering our meal. Yet strangely, the far superior Wagamama and Pizza Express in Victoria Square have no problem with giving Perks Cards discounts when the card is presented at the end of the meal.
After this recent, unpleasant and particularly horrible dining experience, even my friend has come to his senses and refuses to dine here again. For which I’m very grateful. A place best avoided.

I’ve enjoyed Frankie and Bennys anytime I’ve went. The atmosphere was nice, the décor quirky, and a good range on the menu. The meals I’ve had have all been tasty. They serve meals like burgers, hot dogs, pizzas, pasta, breakfasts, and so on. Cocktails are available too which is always a good thing! Staff are friendly and helpful.

There is a certain wary expectation when the waiter informs you that their house gravy is an «onion gravy», particularly when you order said gravy and he responds with a slight tone of warning in his voice, as if the fact that it’s an onion gravy may make you change your mind about your gravy order. Of course, he didn’t realize who he was dealing with and I placated him with a slight wave of my hand and cheeky smirk.
The dish accompanying the onion gravy was a cheeseburger and fries and the sauce arrived piping hot in a very tiny gravy boat; a welcome change from other chain restaurants and their ceramic condiment bowl or — God forbid — a small plastic cup.
I dipped the first fry in and the gravy adhered to the chip in a hearty manner, perhaps about 70% opacity, a high number in spite of my low expectations.
Hints of onion as well as red wine favouring danced on my tongue upon the first bite, with a delightful note of balsamic vinegar rounding out the experience in an unexpected way.
It tasted quite like a home made gravy; something an Italian grandmother would create in her kitchen while having a yelling conversation with her neighbour about the quality of that years grape harvest.
It tasted good, but it’s downfall really was the onion aspect of the recipe. Out of all the ingredients you can put in a gravy, onion is perhaps my least favourite, and it’s unfortunate because the presentation and fry-​adherence level was surprisingly high. I would recommend this gravy though — in a sea of chain restaurant gravy-​failures, this fish swims to the top of that particular pack.
More gravy reviews at:

Absolutely love this restaurant! I recommend the New Yorker its delicious. Great service, reasonably priced and the food is always delicious each time I go! Always clean, tables bussed and good atmosphere.

Went here for breakfast this morning and was disappointed slow service (they weren’t busy) and when food arrived it was cold and the toast was burnt as well.
Didn’t complain as we were too tired & hungry and didn’t want to wait any longer that we already had. It was left on the pass too long before waiters collected it.
Value for money if the food was warm!

Served super speedy on a busy day was the first impression of this place. We were on the move, sightseeing, so a quick lunch from the great lunch menu is exactly what we were after.
The food was as good as in any other Frankie’s and we were pleased with the value for money, ready to pay the bill.
Then the trouble started.
After receiving the bill, we waited around 20 full minutes before our waiter came back to our table to process the payment. We were really frustrated at this, given we were in a hurry to get out and see Belfast.
We also quickly learned that our promotion voucher was not eligible on our lunch menu, despite us not having received any indication of this previously.
Not impressed. Won’t go back.

Wow. John review is the most devastating review I have read in quite a while! I can see where he’s coming from. The place is rubbish! I’m not a foodie at all, but I know what a ready meal from Iceland looks like and it’s strikingly similar to that of a meal from Frankie and Benny’s.
I went here for lunch one cold winters day after being dragged around shops for what appeared to be an eternity. I was having a pretty dull day and was hoping it would be improved by some nice food. I went for the burger. Which is simple enough.
They took my order and brought me over a frozen slab of meat with absolutely nothing on it whatsoever. Being to hungry to even bother to ask for toppings, I tucked in. It tasted dreadful. It would have been a cheaper and very similar adventure in taste if I had just licked the floor.

Ahh my old friends Frankie and Benny, these guys have got me through plenty of hangovers at University and now back home when in need of some lunchtime nourishment.
You know what you are getting with Frankie and Benny, traditional/​stereotypical Italian cuisine. Just simple food at an affordable price. This place impressed me recently when I went with my sister my nearly 3 year old and 1 year old nieces, they catered for kids really well, even supplying my older niece with a colouring book and a learning book. Although I think I ended up colouring in all the pictures while we waited for our food and then started on colouring the table, because this was one hell of a wait. Luckily my little niece was given her food while we had our starters but the service for us was just poor. At peak times this has got to be expected but it got to the point my sister had to ask the waitress had they forgotten about us, from that point on we were A-​listers.
All in all Frankie and Bennys is a safe bet especially with kids, but I would avoid it at the peak times as it can get a wee bit cramped and service can get a little slow.

This is a New York Italian Restaurant & Bar — The instantly recognisable red neon sign and warm, inviting interior they hope will ease you into the Frankie & Benny’s experience before you can take your coat off.
This restaurant attracts everybody from couples and parties of friends, to families treating themselves to a night out! Children are extremely well catered for.
The fact that kids are well catered for will probably make a few alarm bells go off and so they should. This is a family restaurant so that means that its is really no good for couples or anyone just wanting to get a quick bite to eat. They do refills which is pretty sweet but that doesn’t really make up for the overall blandness of it all.
You can get all the food you would expect and while you won’t have a bad meal you certainly won’t have a memorable one.

I like he décor in here. As for the food it is bland, but okay. It isn’ really anything special and there are only a few nice dishes on the menu, such as spaghetti carbonara– the rest aren’t that great at all.
One of the main draws to Frankie and Bennys is the low prices. They offer great value for money, with special offers on all the time.
Another good thing is that they’ll refill your drink for free– not beer, it doesn’t work that way!
It’s got kind of a family diner vibe going on so would be good for families, just as long as you’re not after something special.

I popped in here FINALLY just afew days ago as I’d heard so many great things about it. It was around 2pm when I called in with my 8month old son in tow. The place was absolutely buzzing and the host told me there would be a five minute wait for a table which was fine. Then she gave me a buzzer which would go off when my table was ready (how cool) so I went to the bar and grabbed a drink and took the place in. The décor was über American, set up like a New York style restaurant, but not in a horribly cheesy way or a little OTT like TGI’s. The menu was pretty impressive! They had a lunch offer of 2 courses for £7.45 and three courses for £8.95 which is a bargain. I got the Arrabiata pasta and some garlic bread. The pasta was fantastic and wouldn’t be out of place in an Italian Restaurant and the garlic bread was more like a garlic pizza! It was a generous serving but very thin so it didn’t weigh you down! Really great garlic flavour. Its a great place to take kids and I didn’t feel like we were in the way. Really had a great meal here and can’t wait to go back!

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to review this… restaurant for the last few months, and now it’s my chance to put the record straight.
I do think of myself as a foodie (I’ve been cooking for 10 years, professionally catered, blogged, written and reviewed in publications and generally spent a lot of my disposable income on food and drink) however I understand that not everywhere will, or should reserve the same level of finesse given to top end cuisine. It’s expensive, complex and not an everyday thing.
I love finding the cheaper place, still retaining an interesting and varied menu but well priced, simple. A good example is somewhere like Ginger’s pre-​theatre menu.
Well, it was a chilly night… the cupboards were empty and it was either a takeaway or going somewhere for a bite. Now, money was not at it’s most plentiful so it would have to be cheap. We headed over to the fantastically designed but slightly pointless Victoria Square to see what was on offer. Pizza Express? Too full, TGI too pricey for what you get, Frankie and Bennys? …just right? (it wasn’t quite the Goldilocks and the three bears routine)
Greeted by a kitsch pseudo American diner and a sign proclaiming two courses for a meagre £10. Why not.
We took a while to be seated, to be fair it was packed with families and screaming children but still. Had a look at the drinks menu and ordered a Michelob (one of the very few macro American lagers worth having from time to time since they reverted back to an all malt recipe… I’m needlessly anal…)
The only good part of this review is the drinks prices are rock bottom. There, that’s that over.
The standard menu was a combination of all sorts of meaty burgers, a spattering of steaks, pizzas and similarly suited accompaniments. We chose the smaller offer menu that we’d seen on the way in, denser but still, roughly similar to the full one. We both went for a stuffed mushroom, ricotta and pancetta. I opted for a calzone for main and the other half went for…‘sticky prawn pasta’ (there should be an appendix for this mess but this review is already quite lengthy)
The mushroom came. Squishy, but reasonably palatable… that was until I got half way through, took a bite and realised the bottom half had a thick thick layer of blackened… I want to say cheese? (seemed to be that layer that builds up on a grill) Awful… awful.
The calzone took it’s time coming but I was expecting something of a reasonable quality. The last calzone I had was in New York and it was a chewy, fresh doughy beast, stuffed with lots of cheese, quality meat and fantastically appetizing. This was the other end, still not sure if it was frozen and brought in or it was just the dough. Odd, cheap frozen pizza texture, filled with oodles of saccharine, artificially sweetness tomato sauce. Swimming in this broth was sweetcorn, chunks of peppers the size of your fist thin, processed slices of ‘homemade’ meatballs. Hungry or not, I ate very little.
Now, stick prawn pasta… turned out to be, small, rock hard frozen prawns, accompanied by the fist sized raw peppers and onions in a soy based sweet, puckering sauce. This… was served… with pasta. I can’t quite convey how bad a combination Asian flavours and pasta are. The last triumph was a side of garlic potatoes… £3… frozen cheap, well shaped and rounded sh*te from Lynas frozen foods.
Almost worth going so you can have that story to tell your friends and family down the line…

I cannot really understand this Frankie and Benny’s kicking that is going on. The food is worthy of somewhere better than a shopping centre. They staff, though a little bit slow, were very polite and welcoming when we came in. The décor is proper American diner /​50s style which though seems a bit similar to TGI Fridays. It must be the same stereotype that you get when it comes to «Irish» bars abroad. It is not a totally original restaurant but if has some great offers which cannot be sniffed at.
We went for the two courses of specials for £9.95 and after my chicken wings and then my wrap which were both really good and very tasty, I thought I would splash out and get us desserts for two quid extra. Not a bad wee treat.
Ok so I’d admit the place may not win many awards, but it is a damn-​sight better than other food places in Victoria Square and with great food, lovely (slow) staff and offers which leave you full and happy, it is hard to beat.

Any review on Frankie and Bennys has to come with a big caveat. Yes, the food is absolutely beautiful; I particularly recommend the succulent BBQ wings and pizzas, especially the Calzone. And I love the American diner feel it has, making it one of my favourite restaurants. But customer service is pretty damn bad. I mean, charging me a £1 for each extra topping I have on my pizza, despite the fact that it’s meant to be on special offer? Then, there is the wait. We arrived there at 8.30 and didn’t get away until near 11pm because the kitchen kept messing up our orders. And waiting 45 minutes for each dish just wasn’t acceptable. This wasn’t a one off occurence; it happens every time I go there and I know of other customers who have made similar complaints. For this reason, I give it a 2 star rating.

Your children will love Frankie and Benny’s; you will be neither under nor overwhelmed by it, hence my 3 star rating of A-​OK, because it is OK.
Kids will love that it’s American styleee, bright and noisy and therefore they can be bright and noisy too. The menu also appeals to kids — pizza, hotdogs, chicken burgers and at £3.95 the kids meals are good value and include a desert and unlimited soft drinks. Not so good if you are planning to put them to bed anytime soon.
The adult menu is very long and I lost interest half way through it. Lots of BBQ sauce, potato chips, onion rings, Cajun spices and Monterey Jack cheese. The food is pleasant enough, but when I am paying £5 for a starter and £12 for a main course, I like a little bit of sphositication. So my advice is to go at lunchtime for the 3 course meal at just under £9. £9 per adult and £4 per child is good value in my book and you can relax knowing that the kids don’t have to whisper.
A good choice for a daytime family meal.