On Friday night, we visited the fairly new Mangetout for my brothers' birthday. Mangetout's a bit of an all-rounder, it has more than one bar inside, an outside bar, takeaway lunches, live music... The list goes on. And it's great, the food is lovely, specialising in Burgers and Hot Dogs with a twist (although the fat Joey burger, with peanut butter and jelly, is pretty questionable.) They also have a fabulous range of desserts, the warm cookie dough cup (Nutella and peanut butter cookie dough) is a favourite of my brothers'.

Nevertheless, although there's so much going on, I still think there's something missing. Unfortunately starters are non-existent, there's a distinct lack of 'fish options' and they've only recently put the skinny fries back on the menu, apparently because their stockists didn't have them in for a while. This presumably means they're frozen, which is fine, but for me, if you're claiming the ingredients are locally sourced, it's just a bit of a let down. How difficult is it to chop up a few potatoes?! When I asked for my burger medium-rare, I was told that they only do rare, medium or well-done. Again, fair enough, but it's just a tad annoying for a customer, being unable to make these requests. 

Maybe I'm just being picky, but it's only because I really like the place, and I think it could/is becoming pretty massive in Southend. However, it's the little things like the outside bar area, which is separated from the restaurant by a road of parked cars, which I think slightly tarnishes its slick appearance. Don't get me wrong, the food is really, really good, and if you're ever in the area I'd recommend popping in for lunch/dinner. And I'm no expert by any means, but I just think when you're a new place, it's important to not get ahead of yourself too much. It's great to have lots of different areas you can branch out into, but in order to keep standards really high, perhaps it's just better to focus on one area, get it perfect, and then move on to bigger and better things. But what do I know?!