Number Seven

This place changed hands a while ago and it’s been a long time since I last visited. Its my first visit since it became Number 7. Three of us dined. It’s a bright & airy restaurant with good disabled access (but I wouldn’t want to negotiate a wheel chair to the bathroom as it looks like it would be difficult with the current seating layout. The ambience is casual with friendly staff and great background music played at the right level to allow conversation. The seating is comfortable, the plates and bowl contemporary with glasses stamped with Jamie Oliver’s name. The staff are mega friendly, it’s well staffed so the service is attentive without being obtrusive and overall it’s a relatively cheap and cheerful place to have a meal. There’s free wifi albeit with the hassle of having to ask staff for a code having to log in with an 8 or 9 digit code. I had to ask twice before I got the code. Most importantly the food is fairly priced to match the dishes on offer and everything we got was cooked to perfection. To me its a reasonably priced upmarket greasy spoon (this is not a criticism just a way of describing café style ‘fast’ food) with the main fare being various burgers with variations of beef burgers with pepper sauce or with bacon or onion rings and so on. The chicken burger is breast meat with a light batter and there’s a vegetarian choice burger too. There was one pasta dish which was vegetarian and add a £1 if you wish to include chicken, but no option to add prawns. The menu also offered sandwiches, salads and soups. Most mains were around the £8 mark. The blackboard specials did announce a fillet steak with chorizo, and pepper sauce about £20. The Facebook page did show previous dishes including tempura prawns and other more up market dishes but no sign of them when we were there. I had two pieces of lightly battered thin hake, a wet white fish (I prefer cod or haddock) with factory prepared, bought — in potatoes for chips (properly cooked in veg oil and served piping hot) tasty tinned mushy peas and industrially made mayonnaise with added gherkins. No one soaks peas overnight nor makes fresh mayonnaise no doubt it’s blamed on elf & safety. Soaking the peas would produce a mega tasty product. One real bug bear for me — the diet coke serving in tiny 190 ml bottles is a real rip off. I seen babies bottles bigger. This American giant is taking the p**s. It makes it dearer than wine to buy a cheap, chemically sweetened fizzy drink. The unit cost of cola in the bottle must be well less than a penny. It’s not good value for money for the customer either. Rant over. They do make good coffee too so all things considered well worth a visit.