Sunderland - Ryan Review

Arrived at this branch around 7:45pm on a Wednesday night - and it was packed! It's located on Sunniside Leisure complex and also houses a Tenpin and an Empire with other restaurants too, so seems like the place to go in Sunderland!

After 6pm (or maybe it was 5:30pm), parking at Sunniside multi-storey was only 50p per hour, so really great value.

There were 8 sets of people infront of the queue waiting for tables, so the hostess advised there'd be a 20-25 minutes wait... which ended up being only 10 minutes. No wait to order either - and even though it was rammed, just under 10 minutes wait for the food - so good timings indeed.

The branch itself is quite spacious. The first thing that strikes you is the very high arched wood-panelled ceiling with two very large chandeliers hanging down from it. Gives a lot of light off. Right at the back, there are some unique carved wooden cows on some stepped individual shelves which are nice. Sculpted pots all around the top of ceiling too. Nice branch layout as well - benches at the back for larger groups and four large booths at the right hand side (easily seating 8 in each), with plenty of tables chairs eitehr side of the entrance at the front. Good layout. Only bad thing were the toilets - although they were clean, there was no soap, no toilet paper, no hot water and the hand-dryer blew cold air! (Still gets a 4 though.)

Staff were very friendly too. It was overly busy, so you could expect them to get the tables turned round and nothing more - but there still had time to chat to everyone which was good to see.

Food was okay. The chips and rice were really nice - hot crispy/moist, but the chicken was a bit of a let down. A bit fatty/greasy and once you got near the bone it was quite pink - and red in some parts. It had been rushed and a couple extra minutes on the grill would have sorted it.

Am sure if it were less busy the food would have been served better - but a good visit overall.