Tuesday 24 February 2015

Peachy Keen's, Manchester

Peachy Keen's, Manchester
I have two conflicting memories of buffet style restaurants. The first was some horrific Chinese place that made me horrendously sick. That was a low point in my culinary escapades. The second is the Wynn in Las Vegas; home to toffee apples for breakfast, a wondrous place that would have brought a tear to Willy Wonka's eye.

So to Peachy Keen's. There's no apostrophe in their name, but I'm running with one because that makes me feel wholly uncomfortable. When I first received the invite to test out their Manchester restaurant, I was haunted by the Chinese buffet memory, but decided to give it a go because there was promise of a dessert bar. What can I say, I'm weak.
Peachy Keen's, Manchester
My pal Lee and I took a random Wednesday off work and headed to the bright lights of Peachy Keen's. The restaurant is upstairs in the Printworks, but from inside looks like it could be night time in Vegas rather than 2pm in drizzly Manchester. It's much bigger than I expected, and although quite subdued at lunchtime, I imagine it's a hive of activity in the evening, with several live cooking stations serving food from around the world.
Peachy Keen's, Manchester
We were a bit overwhelmed on arrival, and did a bit of an investigatory lap before committing to any single cuisine type. We obviously started with Indian - rude not to!
Peachy Keen's, Manchester
There was a game plan. Little bits of lots of things. Don't overdo it, otherwise our plan to raid the Mr Whippy machine would have been done for. We had a delicious mixture of daal, Bombay potatoes, chicken curry, rice, chutneys, naan bread and onion bhajis. A natural follow up to this was Italian... This consisted of pizza, spicy wedges, chips (don't judge us...) coleslaw, tomatoes with Mozzarella and freshly cooked carbonara from the live station.
Peachy Keen's, Manchester
Our plans to eat more were somewhat scuppered by our earlier (and costly) decision to share a pastrami toastie in Proper Tea. Like we needed that. We had to have a rest before attacking the dessert counter, but we soldiered on in the interest of food blogging. I know, total warrior-like behaviour.

I managed a mini mango cheesecake, a jelly shot (sadly not alcoholic), some apple crumble and custard and a token piece of peach. Lee fared a little better, sampling numerous Jelly babies, some marshmallows dipped in the chocolate fountain, jelly and some undisclosed cheesecake of which I have no recollection.
Peachy Keen's, Manchester
We sat there, fit to burst with our eyes on the prize... The Mr Whippy machine. I've always wanted to pull my own ice cream (watch it...). Lee went for the 'giddy kippered - pile it on' approach, whereas my inner cake decorator forced me to do the 'icing a cupcake' routine. Either way, we had a bloody good time! Move over Softy's Hard Stuff...
Peachy Keen's, Manchester
Lunch at Peachy Keen's is £7.95 per person, which is a bit of a bargain considering the variety and volume of food on offer. Unlike some buffet restaurants, the food is of a decent standard and the dining room is clean and spacious. Granted, you can get a better curry or Italian in the city, but this is a bit of fun. I have to say that it exceeded my expectations, and both of us had a cracking little afternoon.

Peachy Keens on Urbanspoon

2 comments:

  1. The Peachy Keen in Manchester looks fab x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Omg could you even move after all of that??!!!! It looks tremendous!!! Did you read my post about the breakfast at the Park Inn Manchester? It's kinda like this place - but without the ice cream! X

    ReplyDelete

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