Our nearest one is the Steers in Main Road, Somerset West. I popped in and placed our order: 1 double ribs, 2 veggie burgers and a medium chips. For the price of R154.80, I had high hopes that we'd get good-sized portions that tasted great, enough to feed three hungry people who had put in some hard slog. After all, this isn't an every-day occurance.
(For comparison purposes, we pay R172 for 6 pizzas at Roman's Pizza up the road - enough for a gigantic meal and midnight-snack leftovers)
Usual 15 minute wait later, I grabbed our packaged-up order, headed home and we opened our "lucky packets" to dig in to lunch.
The ribs portions have been shrinking and shrinking. You now pay nearly R100 for around half of what you got 3 months ago for the same price.
Instead of the food being packaged in a large box, you now have a handful-box containing one of the previous two portions, cut in half - with chips. They don't say "cheap as chips" for nothing, which is why the same amount of potato is still thrown in. See those two bits above? Yup, used to get double that.
This we know - and although we're not happy, at least they cook them decently and it's a once-in-a-while treat for my favourite carnivore. Unfortunately the halved portions at the same price mean he's not quite as full after eating his way through them as he used to be, and has to go prowling around the kitchen to fill the void.
On to the veggie burgers my son and I ordered. Here's what is advertised on the menu:
Although not cheap, there's at least a couple of veggies, a patty and some nice Steers sauce. Steers have developed a great in-house veg patty worth paying for, the one in the pic above.
Here's what we got:
No lettuce, no steers sauce, one piece of limp tomato, some dressing, a dab of tomato sauce hidden on the base, and a patty I could have bought a 4-piece box of at Checkers for the price they charged for the entire burger.
Because I was hungry, I had no choice but to eat it. But it turned out to be the worst burger I've ever had. Besides the thousand-island dressing, the veg patty was cooked/grilled in such a way that it picked up burnt food of some variety from the grill (see the back bit of the bun in the lower pic), was only half-heated and tasted absolutely awful. It left a terrible after-taste that I'm trying to drown in chocolate at the moment.
I'm quite prepared to pay for good food, and to treat my family to a decent take-away once in a while. But Steers will not be getting my business again any time soon. Not for that price, and not for the crap we received. I work way too hard for my food money to throw it away on rubbish.
If you want a decent take-away burger with chips, and are a carnivore, I recommend you take your business to the non-franchised Big Mamma's across the road from Checkers instead.
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4 comments:
You should have (yeah hindsight is always 20/20) taken it back and complained to the manager. Most take-aways these days are a far cry from the advertised products - and just like any other type of product advertising they should be nailed for it.
The only fast-food joint these days whose products actually do resemble the photos in their adverts are Nando's but they are too on the higher end of the price scale.
And you're right, for the same price or more often than not, for less, you can simply buy some ingredients and make your own meal - however we work hard and often just want something made for us - you pay for convenience is what it boils down to.
Value for money Roman's pizza's are tough to beat - just stay away from everything claiming to have Pepperoni on, it's not actually Pepperoni, and whatever it actually is, it tastes disgusting.
We've given up on Steers except on very rare occasions when we've got to have beef burgers and then we steer clear of the combos.
When we want a burger we get chicken burgers from Flameros on Main Road in Strand. The burgers are big, have a chicken breast fillet on them rather than reconstituted road-kill and the portion of chips is huge. They're great chips too, particularly if you ask for spicy ones. Don't know what that spice is but it tastes great.
Pizzas we get from Romans but our favourite take-aways are Subway and Simply Asia. The pastrami sub from Subway at R19-90 for 6" or R36-90 for 12" beats any other take-away for price, taste and healthy ingredients. Simply Asia is more expensive than other places but make good food and sometimes Thai food is the only thing that will hit the spot.
Deems - unfortunately using R20's petrol to go complain about a R21 burger simply isn't economically viable... but the unterweb record is forever :-)
Steve - we may well have to start shopping around for other take-aways, though Mike's for chips (top of Main Rd in SWest) is definite value for money. Domino's makes a reasonable sub at a good price too. Thanks for the recommendations!
Good to hear about the places that give value for money.
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