I must admit I have a bit of a soft spot for American-style diners. I am fortunate enough to have enjoyed some amazing (pre-children) holidays in Florida, where we got rather used to eating out in some lovely restaurants. I’m constantly on the search for places to eat over here that offer the same quality and service that the American diners offer over there.

Recently a new Frankie & Benny’s restaurant has been built in our nearest retail park in Crewe, and, knowing that this was an American-style chain, I’d been thinking that I’d like to go and check it out. So when an email arrived inviting me to test out the new menus and report back what I thought, it felt like fate.

Our experience in the Crewe restaurant was excellent. With it being very new everything was clean, freshly decorated, and the service and food were both very good. I took the whole family and we all had an excellent time. It was very family friendly – the children’s menu offers two different sizes of portions for differing sized appetites, and as soon as we walked in we were presented with balloons and activity sets for both kids. In fact the geekdaughter’s favourite part was the toilets – there was a special child-sized sink for her to wash her hands in! The most amusing part for me was discovering quite how much the geekson loves dough balls – the waitress offered us some when we ordered our drinks at the start, and they disappeared so quickly we ordered some more before the main courses arrived!

Overall I thought that the Crewe Frankie & Benny’s brought back thoughts of being on holiday in America, and they captured the atmosphere of an American diner very well. I would definitely eat there again. In fact I have. Several times…

Our favourite part of Frankie & Benny’s was not anything we tested that day, but something we’ve been doing since then. Breakfast. Going out for breakfast was always a big part of our family holidays in the States, and the geekdaddy particularly has been really enjoying revisiting those days. He likes to head over there after dropping the kids at nursery and grab a cooked breakfast with unlimited coffee and take advantage of the free WiFi.

Ah yes, free WiFi. It turns out that Frankie & Benny’s have some things to offer geeks, starting off with a free decent internet connection. The geekdaddy loves sitting in a booth with his iPad, drinking his morning coffee and dealing with his email.

Then there’s the app. Yes, there’s a Frankie & Benny’s iPhone app (runs on the iPad too in compatibility mode). According to their website it’s also available on Android, but I haven’t tested that. It’s free and you can use it to find your nearest restaurant, and you can also find all the different menus on it too. This is actually really useful, as when we went for lunch we found ourselves drowning in menus – there was the standard menu, then the lunch menu, then the specials menu – there wasn’t enough room on the table for them all! However with the app you’ve got them all in one place and it’s much easier to navigate between menus. The other useful part of the app is that it lists all the current promotional offers – for example there’s one available at the moment where kids eat free when you buy an adult main course, available on presentation of your phone screen showing the voucher.

We really enjoyed our experience at Frankie & Benny’s in Crewe, and I can definitely recommend them as a great place for a family meal out. And for breakfast. Seriously, treat yourself to breakfast there some day.

Disclosure: I was provided with a £50 voucher to spend on a meal in Frankie & Benny’s for the purposes of this review