Birthday lunch at Frankie & Benny's

To celebrate Federico's birthday today, we decided to go out for lunch to Frankie & Benny's in Marriotts Walk. We visit it a couple of times a year.
The menu is a typical American-Italian food, quite heavy on meat, with a big choice of burgers, pasta and pizzas. Most of the things come with fries.
There are some vegetarian dishes on the menu, which I have tried in the past, but they were a bit boring. I don't think salads are their forte.

Going out with Sash is always tricky. If it's too noisy, he might get stressed and want to leave at once, but we decided we'd still go out together, as we wanted to celebrate Fede's birthday as a family.
Thankfully, Sash was in a good mood.

At some point, there was a young child running around and screeching at the top of her voice, and I braced myself, thinking Sash would get anxious, but the child was soon removed somewhere else to annoy the other people.

When the time came to order, first they didn't have prosecco, then champagne was only available as a bottle (at £35+), which we didn't want.
Steak was all gone, except the biggest size.
In the end we ordered a pina colada cocktail, a glass of rose for me, pepsi and blackcurrant drinks for kids.

Bruschetta looked pretty, but I'd prefer it more toasted.

For me pasta is not a celebratory meal at all, but our birthday boy opted for a plate of carbonara.

A Triple Cheese Burger is as full of calories as it sounds. It has mozzarella sticks inside and lots of mustard, and comes with fries. I should go on a diet tomorrow, shouldn't I?! And no dinner tonight.

Eddie wanted burger slides from children's menu, with fries and peas.

Desserts' list was full of temptations. My guys fancied milkshakes with all sorts of toppings, like cookies, waffles and donuts, but I was wondering if the stodgy bits get soggy in milk.
Have you ever tried those Freakshakes and would you recommend them?

In the end we picked a Can't Decider dessert, which is a perfect option for those who cannot make up their minds. You get four small slices of different cakes - a lemon tart, a pecan pie, a chocolate fudge cake and an Oreo cheesecake, and a mini bowl of vanilla ice cream.

Children's meal deal includes a dessert. Eddie liked the sound of fruit skewers with a chocolate dip.

He said he wished there were more strawberries rather than apples.

We enjoyed our meal together, which is even more precious because Sasha was with us and appeared to be happy and smiley. Simple things like that - eating out together - are often fraught with stress for families with special needs children, so we appreciate these times even more when everything goes without any trouble.

Eddie loves going to Frankie & Benny's, and we had a good laugh together, taking selfies and telling jokes.
The bill was £60+ for four of us.
Our birthday boy got three balloons to take home.
On the way home I was singing aloud "Ding dong merrily on high... Hosanna in excelsis" which left Eddie in stitches, though he kept looking back if anyone could hear us. And I only had one glass of rose, honestly.