The South Bank bar in Nottingham is located as it’s name suggests on the South Bank of the River Trent on the Southern End of Trent Bridge We used to frequent this bar on a fairly regular basis especially on a Friday lunchtime when we used to nearly always have the club sandwich. It was a really good club sandwich as well, nicely toasted white bread, loads of bacon and chicken with the usual green stuff slid in amongst the stack to add some healthy crunch. Depending on your luck or the generosity of the chef that day you would get a huge pile of chips with your sandwich or a small handful. Who got the most chips was an in joke amongst us all. It was the memory of that club sandwich that brought us over Trent Bridge to the South Bank Bar this past Friday night.
This was the moment when we should have read the small print on the menu. As we have already said we were keen to try our old favourite that SouthBank Club sandwich, so we just jumped straight in and ordered the “Club All-In-One ‘Char Grilled Chicken, Bacon, Cheddar Cheese, Egg Mayo, Chips and Fresh Salad'”. We didn’t really read that bit that said ‘ALL-IN-ONE’.
Before I start on about the ‘description’ of the sandwich and how it wasn’t what we expected, I will concede that it is a good sandwich and I have no complaints with it as a sandwich in itself. The grilled chicken was moist and nicely charred, the bacon was crispy and plentiful, the salad leaves gave a nice crunch and the bread was soft and lightly chewy.
Having said that to my mind and definition it isn’t a club sandwich, it is a double decker sandwich, it needs to be at least made with lightly toasted bread to be a club sandwich. The menu said it was made with baked bread, which we thought was a round-about way of meaning toasted or at least crisped up a bit in the oven, after all isn’t all bread ‘baked’?
I was also slightly deflated when I realized that the last bit of the all-in-one description that said ‘…chips and salad’ was referring to chips and salad inside the actual sandwich itself, not a side of salad and a side of chips. This was why I said that we didn’t read the small print, what we actually received was about 5 French fries, similar in style to the sort you get from your chain burger store, slipped into the top layer of the sandwich. Subsequent inspection of the menu revealed that we could have purchased a regular portion of fries for £2.20 or a large portion for £3.95, a fresh mixed salad is listed at £2 for the regular and £3.75 for a large side.
This could have been a better club sandwich than the original, if you just toasted the bread and took the fries out of the sandwich and put a side of fried in nice pile on the accompanying board, then I would have been a happy man. Quite openly we are a bit sad at the demise of our beloved club sandwich, but we do have good memories of it, and lets be honest we haven’t been frequenting the place for a while so I guess that time has just moved on.
On another day I would possibly be more keen now to sample either one of their burgers, which comes with a SIDE or a big tin of fries or one of their All Day Breakfasts which is always a safe bet. They won’t catch me out with the All-In-One again, unless of course that is what I fancy that day and I don’t want any fries.
An added bonus thought was that although the sandwiches were about £6.20 each, we were there at happy hour so we got both for just £9 which did make them good value, and despite the fact that I am in mourning for my old favourite, I have already conceded that it is quite a nice sandwich.
The South Bank Bar is on the South Side of the River Trent at 1 Bridgford House, Trent Bridge, West Bridgford and you can check them out on Facebook and on Twitter as well.