I had to go up north for the night, for a works meeting. I thought we were going to Cheltenham, turned out it was Burton on Trent. That is a whole other story.

We stayed in the Holiday Inn Express which was pretty good. We are all generally based in the south of England or Ireland so we were staying up there the Wednesday night, ready for our meeting Thursday. We decided on a quick bite to eat and a drink Wednesday evening. We all headed for the Corner House which is part of the Flaming Grill group.

There was 16 of us in total so we had to re-arrange a few tables so we could all sit together, the staff didn’t seem to mind too much as we moved half the restaurant around. We all then wrote down what we wanted to eat, we are an organised bunch of people. Ordered our food at the bar which did take a while and left a few people waiting for drinks staring daggers at us for taking so long to order food. A member of a group decided to take them up on one of their famous challenges, which we were told would mean our food would take about 45 minutes to come out. We were there for the night, we had a few drinks we were all quite happy.

The food started to come out in dribs and drabs, meaning some people sat there mouth watering staring at their food, to be polite and wait till everyone got their food. Most people only got told once to just eat their food when it comes so it’s not cold. Most people settled on your normal pub grub, steak and chips or burger and chips. Tom however decided to go for the Trash Can Challenge. Dear o dear. The photo of the challenge was on the menu and we all looked and said nah that’s not a challenge, that’s easy. The dustbin lid (styled out to be a plate) came out, jaws dropped to the table.

His challenge was to eat, the ribs, two corn on the cobs, two bowls of baked beans, a huge portion of chips, a burger with every type of meat in, a pulled pork sundae with nacho chips, onion rings and a chicken skewer. Not only did he have to eat it all, he had to be timed and complete this all in 11 minutes!

He started out well, using his knife and fork, eating all the meat from the burger, using the sauce from the beans. He missed his target off 11 minutes. No photo on the wall for Tom. He carried on, hit 14 minutes and hit a wall! He ate a good deal, with no help from any of us. A pretty good time which he was pleased with, he did have a few bits left. I would love to try all these challenges, but I like to enjoy my food not just rush and scoff it all down.

You can get other challenges, someone else tried the flaming challenge burger. He completely failed, half of the burger got passed around the table for others to eat.

On general the food was okay, don’t think I would personally rush back here for a decent meal out. For a quick bit of food, great. The prices were really cheap, all 16 of us for a meal including sides of garlic bread and things cost £163, which was about £10 each. The amount of food that was coming out the the kitchen was worth the amount we paid. We all seemed to leave with big full tummies so no real complaints from us.

They are currently doing a Father’s Day deal where dad gets a free drink. This could make a funny family meal out if you convince dad to do the challenge and time him. This restaurant isn’t as popular it seems in the south, the nearest one to me is Fleet.