Frankie & Benny's, Liverpool

We thought 'great new restaurant opening around the corner'! Not impressed. Have to admit the place is situated on a retail park and thought we (my partner and myself) would call in after xmas shopping on a saturday afternoon (about 16:50 hours), they told us the wait for a table would be about 10 minutes and sure enough it was.... we were told to wait at the bar (great money making trick) and shown to our table, which was very clean and tidy. The place had quite a lot of childrens birthday parties on and all the kids looked like they were having a great time, happy birthday tunes and sparklers et al..... it was very noisy, but it was a Saturday afternoon. We order the potato skins with goats cheese and the tiger prawns and chilli sauce. Firstly my skins were waiting on the hot shelf for 8 mins, when I got them they were only slighty warm, I could not find the goats cheese under the tomato and onion dressing and they were not skins, but halves of jacket potato's. The tiger prawns, well, I use bigger prawns on my stir fry.... I did suggest we shared the tiger prawns, glad I was persuaded otherwise, they were NOT tiger prawns and the chilli sauce was very watery. I did tell the waitress who was very nice that my starter was only warm and she did ask me if she could get me another, but hey, when youve been shopping all afternoon and your hungry, the last thing you want is to wait another 15 minutes for another starter. For the main meals I had the sticky pasta with prawns, BTW the same prawns as the 'tiger' prawns in the starter, again was only warm... to be honest I was overpowered by the hoi sin sauce, which I usually love, it was so sweet I had to add balsamic vinegar to it.... my partner had the beer battered cod, this was overcooked, the batter was so heavy he just ate the fish out the middle which was quite nice, as for the chips, he got loads of them, good size portion, but they were a little greasy. Normally we are BIG desert lovers, but to be honest I wasnt going to pay another £10 for 2 deserts.... we decided to pass by Asda on the way home and pick up desert for £3. Its a shame because that place could be really great, I have eaten in 100's of places from a la carte 5* to your local greasy spoon and normally I cant complain, but the standard of food is very poor. It may be great if you like burger and chips, which we didnt try, but they have lost my custom, which is a shame because we could have been regulars.

Thanks

Catherine