So many debates about this place say words to the effect of "how can you comment when you've never been there?" Simple answer: easily. However, to speak with some authority I went there with another like-minded soul. Setting aside any predisposition to find the place repellent, the keys issues here are how does the place apparently score on:
- The sexism quotient.
- The standard of the food.
- Other facilities.
The sexism quotient is everything and more you would believe it to be. Too little space to do justice here. Obvious matters: "girls" dressed as well all know and apparently many goose-pimples through lack of warmth; signs everywhere reflecting upon the female form of course (caution bumps; caution blondes thinking - hung upside down; dangerous curves etc); material on sale as can be found by searching the product pages on their website, but let's just pick out for these purposes a pair of male boxer shorts (a snip at £14.95) bearing the words "more than a mouthful" and finally the menus themselves bedecked in girly calendar adverts etc. Oh, and I should add, the system of the mainly male cooks shouting across the whole restaurant for service and the clapping of hands to get the "girls" to come running. Charmless. Sexism quotient: 100%.
Food: Now look, it would be really easy to slag this off just to spoil the place and, after all, the food could be perfectly all right. But it was not. It was awful and utterly overpriced. I ordered nachos, at £8, they were cheap and nasty (as in something you could get from a supermarket for 50p for a huge bag) and covered in some kind of processed cheese sauce which resembled mustard out of a squeezy bottle. There was literally no fresh cheese on the menu so far as I could see in any product - it's all a "cheese" sauce thing. My companion had curly fries, minimum price £3. These were not in any sense cooked or created for Hooters. They were simply the same as above, namely something to be bought in any cheap supermarket. Whilst not ordering burgers or shrimp etc, it is to be noted that nearly everything did NOT come with fries, so you had to add £3 on to nearly every other order. I reckoned that if you wanted a burger with a few bits on it plus fries, you'd be shifting £11 at least. Bear in mind also, no special lunch menu so all prices the same as evening fare. The food was simply dreadfully poor and demonstrably over-priced. Final note: 10 chicken wings (and you know how small those are, just the little wing bit, that's all) cost £7.49 or £7.99 without fries. It is genuinely scandalous and just awful. There would be, as I mentioned above, no reason for the place, whatever its other faults, to actually have moderately good food - but I'm afraid the food mark must be an overly generous 10%. I'm not quite sure what the ten per cent is for other than that there was nothing obviously disgusting about the sour cream and guacamole on the nachos I suppose.
Finally, other facilities. I went to the toilets in expectation of awful things within. Now there were posters of such sporting greats as Tyson (convicted rapist) and Tiger Woods ('nuff said) on the way to the toilets, but within the toilet itself the facilities were clean, modern, perfectly hygienice and unadorned by other materials - both in the men's and women's. So to prove that this is nothing other than a balanced perspective, I give the toilets 100%. Problem is, you'd have much more fun and pleasure spending an hour in there than in the rest of the place. Perhaps that could become a unique selling point?
Will I be back? I might run in there for cover if being chased by an axe-wielding psychopath, but even then I would consider other strategies.