The Cornerhouse

If there's one thing I hate it is making a bad choice when I'm eating out. It was a shame, then, that I made a bad choice when eating out yesterday.

It was an all too rare occasion for us to eat out. We're both out of work so it has required a close eye on our finances to enable us to go out for something nice to eat.

We went to Cornerhouse in Manchester, home to the best pizzas in Manchester apparently. Perhaps that was my first mistake. I didn't have a pizza. But not many other people were choosing pizza so if they are the best in Manchester it must be a well kept secret.

The popular choices last night were the steak sandwich and the spanish meatball sandwich. I had the steak sandwich, the missus went for the spanish meatball - a wise choice it turned out.

On the face of there was nothing wrong with the steak sandwich. The steak was ok, it had some taste and eating it didn't turn out to be a fight with gristle. Although there was a couple of moments when I had to grab the meat and pull it away from my mouth. Never a good thing.

It was meant to come with mustard mayo, but instead it came with Hellman's. A good mayo can be the missing dimension in a good steak sandwich so the kitchen at Cornerhouse really missed a trick there. Hellman's is fine, even fantastic, with a chip. But a steak sarnie really demands better.

Although I was no longer hungry at the end of my meal, I was sated rather than satisfied. And at nearly 9 quid the steak sandwich really should have been better.

The spanish meatball sandwich, on the other hand, was closer to triumph than disaster. The amount of meatballs in the sandwich was more than generous, and the use of chorizo in the sauce meant it really had a lot of taste. In fact, it had almost too much taste and would have benefited from something sharp on the side to balance things out. But that's splitting hairs really. At less than 8 quid this felt like a much better choice than my steak sandwich.

I'll make sure I have a pizza next time.