Description: The Exchange Bar and Grill is the Trafford Centre’s biggest restaurant and has been serving American Diner style food there for twelve years. It is one of my favourite places to eat in the Trafford Centre because it offers good food, a laid back atmosphere and pretty good value for money.
The restaurant is located on the upper floor of the Orient food hall and is open every day from around 11am until 11pm (this varies from day to day, but is a rough guide). The restaurant has plenty of tables, although my favourite place to sit is one of the booths around the edge of the restaurant. I prefer these because they are more comfortable and I think they offer a little more privacy than the other tables scattered around the middle. The booths are the most popular though and usually fill up first.
The menu is mainly burgers, fries, chicken wings and so on. It is pretty simple food but it is all cooked well. They are particularly proud of their chicken wings (which come in ten different flavours) and rightly so as they are cooked to perfection and full of flavour. If you are feeling particularly hungry, try the Ultimate Burger, which is a double burger topped with bacon, cheese and onion rings and is a heck of a meal. If you are dining in a group, get the pole of onion rings which is a very reasonable £4.95 for twenty onion rings with a selection of sauces.
A meal here will cost you about £40 for three courses with drinks, which is not bad value considering the generous portion sizes. You can get even better value than this though if you eat before 6pm when you can choose one course (£5.45), two courses (£8.45) or three courses (£10.45) from a set menu. The menu is pretty expansive considering it is a set one and includes plenty of vegetarian options and lighter meals as well as many of the favourites.
There is also a bar inside the restaurant that serves up an array of cocktails, so it’s a great place to go for some fun as well as a sit down meal. The cocktail menu is very expansive, although if there is something you like that isn’t on there, they’ll be happy to mix it up for you.
One of the best things about this restaurant is the fact that it is so big, there are very very rarely any queues to get in, unlike many of the other places in the Trafford Centre. There are also plenty of staff working here so you don’t have to wait very long for your food, which is another bonus.
Overall I’d have no hesitation in recommending The Exchange Bar and Grill because the food is really nice and much better value for money than a lot of the other options nearby.
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