Carluccio's Bluewater: I will come back after Christmas

Carluccio's in Bluewater shopping mall is a favourite venue of mine. I meet business colleagues there, and have a lunching companion that I go there with from work when time permits. I like the food and ambiance, and in particular, a lot of the time they have a fixed price lunch for just under a tenner, which is good food at a reasonable price.
Unfortunately the firing gun for Christmas shopping has been been discharged, and the shopping center is full of shoppers and those who come to look before they buy over the Internet. I quite often buy from John Lewis over the Internet, and pick up here as you can park right outside. The food court at the Village end has some reasonable places, but I keep returning to Carluccio's. Given my prior comment about not going back somewhere, it is probably because of the consistency that I go back.
Without the set menu, my host had to tolerate me ordering from the main menu. There is a Christmas menu, but it seems to be of no interest or virtue.As usual I have the pate which is probably a chicken liver pate which comes in a ceramic container with a seal of fat and a plate of toast. The picture I took tells you nothing, so it will have to see it in your imagination. Suffice it to say, I will be ordering it again.
Today, as a change, I had a veal escalope

Actually, you cannot tell a lot from this picture as the veal is buried under a mount of greenery, but it is obviously not a large portion. It is fine, but not brilliant. Well to over cooked, with a portion of lemon to squeeze over, and a side order of spinach which arrived some time after the main dish. It looks pretty healthy, and I have to say that the spinach was not drowned in butter, and if the veal was fried (It may have been once in its existence but may have been a frozen portion at this stage of it's life) it was not the least bit greasy. A 7.8 on the CHOF scale. Hot but could have been hotter. We were in the alfresco bit of the restaurant on a fairly cold day, so that could have been part of it.

I get very curmudgeonly around Christmas, as I hate restaurants that abandon their clients in favour of a quick buck from an indifferent Christmas menu. It's probably one of the reasons why I like Indian food, as they do not pander to the seasons for the most part. I can only hope that the fixed price menu comes back again soon. What I like even less is the enforced jollity of the work Xmas lunch outing where restaurants quite clearly are trying to offer as little as possible at the highest available price. Although I paid up front for my own Xmas lunch outing, I now discover that I won't be free to go, but that is a story for a later blog.