A truly lovely foyer area which instantly feels like a lounge/bar.  However, we were there for the dining room action so shall skip straight to that.  But my point being; it's lovely from the moment that you enter, all the way through to the diner space. 

Once you've entered and turned right, just beyond the cosy lounge area, the dining room/diner is unmistakable.  Dimly lit for that perfectly intimate evening, adorned with tons of lovely plush upholstered leather booths, with a scattering of two person tables sat right next to the pass for those who prefer to geek out over the kitchen action rather than talking to their company.  Very smart indeed and didn’t need a Wurlitzer as per more traditional American diners.

But aside from the nice signage and newly renovated entrance/foyer area, the outside of the venue/main hotel looks ominously Cold War era in vibe; a far cry from the lovely warm interior. 

And the scruffy printed A4 paper menus need ditching, pronto, plus the 'Milanese' dish was misspelt too, as per the online menu.   Good excuse to reprint on a proper menu..

The bill for 3 starters, 3 mains, sides, soft drinks and service, came to a smidge over £100.  I've got to be honest; ahead of looking at the online menu and making an eventual booking, I expected the damage to be much more significant based on all factors, largely the general quality of the broader Mollie's product and that prime location.

I've seen a fair few places reduce their prices recently, so maybe the penny has finally dropped that even amidst ever-rising costs for wages, produce, energy and everything else, the answer isn’t to price people out of dining altogether via unaffordable menus which leads to zero covers.  Maybe it's instead sensible to attract more covers for less profit per cover?  People want a combo of occasion and value at the moment, and Mollies for us, delivers that in buckets.

Nothing to note that's out of the ordinary.  The well-earned additional 10% service charge should be mentioned on the menu though, which it wasn’t.  We paid the 10% plus another 5% anyway.

Prompt, warm, friendly, and everything that you'd want in such a place.  We didn’t even need to wait on our fries to be refilled, and were proactively asked if we needed any more before we actually did.

Nothing comes to mind at all based on the formality of the venue.

American diner is the story at Mollies, and the menu is packed full of crowd-pleasing classics.  You'll be pretty much certain to find something that you fancy eating regardless of your taste buds' preferences or your wallet's thickness.

We started with Monkey Bread and maple salted butter (£6.5).  Well baked and looked great, made in a Parker House Roll tear and share style, fully in keeping with what most British top end restaurants are doing at the moment with their bread courses.  Very nice indeed.

Frickles (£5.5) were a must order snack.  A bowl of pickles, battered and deep fried served confidently with a solid mustard mayo which along with the pickles' inherent acid, helped to counteract all that fatty richness.  The portion size was also more than generous too.

But the unanimous favourite pick of the trio was the Sweetcorn Nuggets (£6.5). A generous serve of fritters, fried to perfection despite looking overdone in our badly lit photo, served with a deeply smoky chipotle mayo and a properly trimmed wedge of lime allowing for some DIY zing.  Seriously good.

Onto the mains and we just had to order the famous Mollie’s Double Cheeseburger (£12.5).  Our photo generally didn’t do this much justice in hindsight, which is 100% on us.  Ignoring that, we enjoyed the textbook glazed bun which housed two high quality smashed patties, a hearty slice of American cheese, burger sauce, house relish, and pickles, plated with an extra pickle on the side, because well why not?  It was just a super clean, not at all greasy, great tasting, well-made burger which ate really well too.  The latter point is sadly neglected by many these days.

Mac & Three Cheese (£12) was my personal choice for dinner, and is a dish that if you don’t like eating then Molly's probably just isn’t your bag at all.  Some people prefer uber saucy Mac and Cheese, but not me.  It has to be pasta bake style for my palate, and this was right up my strasse.  The cheese blend comprised of Cheddar for depth of flavour and richness, Mozzarella for a bit of IG friendly cheese pull, and some Grana Padano for nuttiness, as well as with providing an excuse for one of my group to gesticulate with stereotypical Italian hand gestures, as I ate.  Somewhat irritatingly if I'm being honest.  I added some jalapeno for a hit of spice (+£2) which was a well measured investment.  It was just a tasty, comforting and well put together plate.

Finally, Chicken ‘n’ Waffle (£16) is likely one of their top sellers based on what I could see going out to other tables as well as ours.  A super light yet flavour packed waffle, topped with crumbed and fried chicken, a huge portion of crispy bacon and some maple chicken gravy on the side.  The bacon element was absolute perfection and raised an audible 'Oooh' from the table upon being served.

Mollie's offer 'Unlimited Fries' (£7), which on paper sounds spenny but three of us went through two large bowls, which by our reckoning was about five portions of regular fries, which usually cost £4.50 each.  So, we got our money's worth to say the least.  Value points aside, they were ideal in texture and seasoning too, hence we pigged out and enjoyed.  I expect that Mollie's will become known for this offering alone.  Unlimited fries and a lovely burger for sub £20?  Sign us up.

House Slaw (£3.5) and Southern Cheese Corn (£4.5) completed the assortment of sides, but to be honest the fries alone would have done us due to their sheer volume. The cheese corn was a lovely dish though; creamed corn topped with as much as cheese as you'd expect in any American led diner, with a crunchy slaw which was clearly made with at least some red cabbage, resulting in the whole plate being pink.

We skipped puds, again largely due to those fries.  But a couple of Dr Pepper floats didn’t escape our gluttony, and they were glorious despite coming with paper straws which ironically needed wastefully replacing after they'd returned to pulp state, twice.  The ice cream was already semi melted so sat atop like the excessive head on a badly rested Guinness. Here though, it was the perfect ratio balance of ice cream and Dr Pepper. Wonderful.

But; our frickles were overly battered and heavy.  The waffle's chicken coating was overdone and the general dish lacked finesse in presentation. Lastly, the slaw's dressing had made it leech massively, causing the whole thing to swim in a pool of its own juice.  Good for unlimited chip dipping, perhaps, but technically correct, not so much.

We visited Mollie's on this occasion for dinner with a friend, not as a review.  That partially explains why some of our photos are pretty dreadful; because when off the clock we prefer to eat hot food over the lukewarm efforts which often follow on from taking well composed press photos.   However, we had such a good time that we thought it only apt to write things up in the end, and so here we are with this blurb.

It's a refreshing change to see a Manchester venue open without a hugely coordinated and extravagant PR activation.  But a lack of the now expected press release resulted in us not knowing too much about Mollie's before its launch to be honest, other than it was a small chain and combined a hotel and diner, to seemingly service the upper-market hotel gap which existed in the newly established media/studio-heavy side of town.  It was assumed that they were from down in that there London, but after some pre visit PI work we found that Mollie's hails from Oxford, originally in a former Little Chef unit!

Whilst I've praised the value above, and will stand by that in relation to the local market and property standard, Mollie's Manchester is perhaps understandably more expensive than that OG branch in Oxford.  Their hotdog is a 12" beef one, compared to our 10" pork offering at 50p more, which speaks volumes about our city's modern demographic and how segments of it have 100% become akin to a Northern England London burb in terms of hospo pricing in recent years.  But forgetting the now normalised £7 pints in both cities, I guess you can't buy a 3 bed in Shoreditch for £200k, like you still just about can in Prestwich.  There being a Gail's in P Town isn’t a coincidence either.

But ultimately, it's just a really nice place to enjoy some tasty comfort food, which still carries a bit of occasion without dropping very much money at all!  And that's just what the current market demands.  Flat Iron around the corner are known for their seemingly 'bargain' flat iron steaks, costing just £15.  But that’s without anything else at all.   Yet if you walk 3 minutes up the road, Mollies offer a feather steak, which is exactly the same cut as a flat iron, along with a normal portion of fries and also peppercorn sauce, in an arguably posher space albeit with no 'free' popcorn or ice cream, for just £18.  It's a similarly good bargain in truth.

I'll be back for a hot dog and those unlimited fries in due course!