Fairfax Road, Prestwich
Panama Hatty’s has been
serving a plethora of modern cuisine throughout the North West for over twenty
years. It’s a restaurant I’ve always fancied trying but, for reasons unbeknown
to me, I’d never got round to it, until this week.
Panama Hatty’s mixes up the
cuisines, fusing together flavours from across the world. Burgers, fajitas,
burritos, curries and grilled steaks are all available for your delectation,
meaning there is something to suit everybody’s taste on the vast menu. There’s
also a brunch, lunch and a set price early evening menu, the latter of which we
ordered from on Thursday evening.
The Prestwich restaurant is
billed as “the younger, slimmer and more attractive member of the family”. It
may be the smallest of the three establishments, but they were certainly right
about its looks, as it’s a gorgeous interior, with plush, tan-coloured leather
seating and wicker chairs. Ornate lights hang asymmetrically from the ceiling
and the walls are adorned with mirrors of all shapes and sizes.
My dining companion and I were
seated on a spacious corner table, which meant we were almost at ninety degrees
to each other; perfectly positioned for people watching, if you’re a nosey
diner, like me. Plus, when you’re there for a catch up, having not seen your
friend for a few months, it makes talking easier; when you’re not distracted by
what everybody else is eating, that is.
The set
price menu offers two courses for £13.95 or three for £17.95, and there’s a
very generous choice for all courses. Confession time: I’m terrible when it
comes to food envy. No matter how happy I think I am with my choice, by the
time I’ve observed what everybody else is tucking into, you can guarantee I’ll
have changed my mind. However, there was no chance of that happening on
Thursday evening, as both picked the same dishes.
To start, we had mushroom and
stilton bake, served with warm crostini bread. It was a fiesta dish of
mushrooms slathered in stilton cheese and baked to perfection, the stilton
melting all over the top of the mushrooms, making it the perfect consistency
for dipping the crusty bread. Whilst I’m not normally a fan of strong cheeses,
I find them much more appetising when cooked. It was also a very generous portion
for a starter. After the first course, I was seriously questioning why I’d
never been here before.
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| Mushroom and stilton bake with crostini bread |
For main course, it was a
chicken burrito. The tortilla wrap was packed with chunks of chargrilled chicken,
onions, peppers, cheese, Latina rice, sour cream and salsa verde, which, if you’re
unfamiliar with Mexican cuisine, consists of finely chopped onion, garlic,
coriander, parsley and hot peppers. When I’ve had a burrito elsewhere, it’s
been served on its own on the plate, decorated with little bits of salsa, so I
was expecting something similar. However, the burrito itself only took up half
the plate, as it was served with a tower of Latina rice and a handful of nachos,
stacked with extra salsa verde and sour cream. Garnished with a slice of lime
and a sprig of parsley, it was beautifully presented and I was salivating at
the sight of it. I was genuinely astonished by both the quality and the quantity
of the food: it was delicious, although a little too spicy for my feeble tongue.
The additional sour cream, intended for the nachos, was very useful indeed.
 |
| Chicken burrito with Latina rice and tortilla chips |
Up to this point, both the food and the service had been faultless. Unfortunately, when it came to dessert, the staff let themselves down. After perusing the dessert menu, we waited for over half an hour for our waiter to return to take order, meanwhile watching him attend to all the other customers. An invisible wall appeared to have sprouted around the outskirts of our little corner, and, eventually, we resorted to giving him daggers across the room in the hope that we would finally be able to place an order. It’s a good job we weren’t in a rush. It doesn’t matter how busy a restaruant gets, there is no excuse for neglecting paying customers. Credit to him, he was apologetic (apparently he hasn’t been working there for very long) and brought us our desserts swiftly, but it was a shame, given that the majority evening had been so enjoyable.
As there’s still one more week
of Lent to go (and I’m counting down the days), I drifted away from the set
price menu, as ice cream would have been my only dessert option, and instead
opted for a sweet and sugary waffle from the a la carte menu. Drizzled in toffee
sauce and topped with salted caramel ice cream, it’s certainly only for those
with a sweet tooth. Given my abstinence from most things sweet of late, I was
positively bouncing off the walls by the last spoonful, albeit with a heavy stomach.
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| Toffee and salted caramel waffle |
Panama Hatty’s excellent
value-for-money set price menu is available until 7.00pm from Monday to Friday
and until 5.00pm at the weekend. The fact that the restaurant was so busy on a
Thursday night shows how popular the place is, with many more waiting at the
bar for tables. It’s a charming venue serving top quality food at reasonable
prices, along with inventive cocktails and a fine selection of alcoholic beverages.
All the menus, including
lunch, brunch and even Sunday roast options, can be found at:
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