Chains changed: Zizzi reshape reshaped garlic bread

Having moaned about the apparent sleight-of-hand used by Zizzi in placing their garlic bread with cheese on a piece of wood and shrinking the size, it's good to report that (perhaps because they realised their customers aren't that stupid) they've gone back to giving a proper sized bread on top of the wood.

The new menu is now in place - not very much interesting in terms of new items, although if it's true that they've introduced calamari because of "popular demand", then someone's going to be happy. Not the squid, though.

Chains changed: TGI Fridays spring menu

Less enticing news from TGI Fridays, though. They've pared their standard menu down even further with the Spring iteration. There is a bowing to the inevitable, and the cheese planks have finally been admitted to the list of appetizers (who, really, would order four hand-sized slabs of baked mozzarella as a side? Unless they had their own defibrillator on hand?)

Sadly, though, two of the nicer appetizer options have vanished - onion scoops and, unforgivably, the spinach dip. Isn't spinach dip one of the chain's key products? In the US, you can buy it frozen to take home and make yourself feel over-cheesed in the luxury of your own armchair; how can it not be featured in the restaurant?

There's been a bit more fidgeting, too, with what has up until now been the San Francisco Burger - one of the few vegetarian options at TGI - turning into a sandwich. It doesn't make it any better, and its shuffling on the menu seems merely designed to try and stop people asking for different sauces upon it. But, lord, it needs something - even had mine not arrived charcoaled into oblivion, it would need something. The menu promises "a toasted bun", but clearly the half-arsed lobbing of the roll under a heatlamp is intended merely to try and disguise the staleness of the bread. It doesn't work, and attempting to lift the 'sandwich' merely results in the crackling of the bun like the arctic icecap during a particularly warm summer's morning.

Increasingly, the UK menu at TGI is looking like it's approached as an irritant which impinges on a mission of selling unconvincingly-coloured cocktails. Pity.

Chains changed: Chiquitos lunch menu

Interesting development over at Chiquitos: they've vastly expanded their lunchtime special menu. Up until now, if you chose the cheaper option, you were tied to a really, really slimmed down list of dishes. Now, though, they've moved about half the standard menu onto the options, including vegetable fajitas and the vegetable chili tacos.

Even better news: the chain seems to have shifted their attention away from making everything over-sweet, and the vegetable chili is edible again.

Chains changed: Zizzi prepare Spring 2009 menu

Dropped by Zizzi yesterday, and caught them in the shift from the Winter to Spring menus.

The most obvious sign of this was the brutalisation of the mighty garlic cheese bread with caramalised onion. Hitherto, this has arrived on a plate, the size of a pizza.

Yesterday - although the new menu hasn't even started yet - it came out on a rectangular piece of wood, ready cut and assembled in a pile. Now, there are two possible reasons for this.

One might be that Zizzi has decided it's an exciting and attractive new way of presenting the dish.

The other, would be that Zizzi have realised you might not notice that the pizza bread has shrunk in size, but not in price if it comes in a different shape.

Number two would be the winner.

They've also added rosemary to the recipe, which adds nothing in terms of flavour. Well, actually, it adds a lot in terms of flavour, but nothing that sits well with the onions.

The staff told us that the pizzas are going to be presented in this manner, too, when the new menu kicks in. I don't know what the cost of equipping the chain with these new wooden platters would be, but presumably the savings made by shrinking the portions will help pay for that?

Chains changed: Pizza Express

The Pizza Express in Milton Keynes mall is trialling the new spring menus - and... well, the news isn't great. The concept is "lighter", which means they've had to come up with a cute way of making the pizzas less calorific.

How have the done it?

By, erm, cutting out most of the centre of the pizza and dumping a salad in the middle of it. (And also making the pizza smaller in the first place.)

It's a pity, as the toppings sound great - asparagus and peppers, a really fresh-sounding margherita. But half your pizza replaced by lettuce? What sort of a half-assed concept is that?