The Atrium

Schlimme Kantinenatmo im Costa-​betriebenen Atrium. Wenn Menschen keinen Bock auf erinnerbare Gastronomie haben, dann machen sie so etwas. Ungelogen: Ich kam mit einem kleinen Hunger hier herein. Als ich sah, was hier ging — da ging mein Hunger. Das Club Sandwich meines Kollegen war weder Club, noch Sandwich. Labberige Fritten rundeten das traurige Bild ab. Hier will ich nicht essen und lasse mir meinen Hunger durch die angebotenen Speisen vertreiben — ohne sie gegessen zu haben.

Overpriced and understaffed.
I can somewhat understand the prices being jacked up, they’ve got you over a barrel much like the do at airports, but the understaffing was ridiculous.
We popped in for some lunch when at MCM Comic-​con in November on what had to be one of the busiest weekends at the NEC. There was MCM (where something like 30,000 people attended of the weekend), the National Bike Show (which is huge), the National Cat Show and the Christmas Gift Fair. So, at lunchtime they only had 3 out of a possible 8 tills open and only barely enough staff to cover those — some of the queues to order food were stretching out into the smoking area/​beer garden!
I shouldn’t complain too much, the food arrived just after they said it would and was fairly standard ‘spoons fare. I just resented paying £30 for 2 distinctly average burgers and 2 pints. For some reason they don’t seem to do any of the normal ‘spoons meal and drink offers here, but as I mentioned earlier they do have you over a barrel.
I think I’ll take my own food and drink on my next trip to the NEC…

If it was possible to leave a Zero star rating on Unilocal I would have done so. I walked in here with open eyes — it’s a weatherspoons and I wasn’t expecting fine dining but what I just ate was hands down, one of the worst meals I’ve ever had.
I kept it simple and went for a cheese burger with chilli — very small burger (with a curious grey-​ish colour on the inside), stale bun, chilli topping was served on the side for some reason and was as appetising as it looked (bland and mushy), chips were barely cooked. Avoid at all costs.