Three years ago, we stayed in New York for around 5 months. During our time here, we came across various different restaurants and cafe's and sampled many culinary delights, ranging from crab to the usual cheeseburgers and chips. One restaurant we were planning on dining out in was the Hard Rock Cafe, however the night we had planned to go, on arriving we were sent away due to the fact we would have to weight 1 hour fifteen minutes to get a table. It was around 7pm at this time and with young children in to we decided to give up and we went off to the neareset pizza joint.
Ever since the experience in New York, I have been determined to sample the food at the Hard Rock Cafe. I was totally oblivious to the fact there was one situated in Edinburgh, a fourty five minute drive or a 30 minute train ride from my house.

The Hard Rock Cafe is situated on George Street in Edinburgh and is extremely difficult to miss; a huge sign outside the door willing people in. As we were on foot, we didn't have to find a parking space, however if you do happen to drive then you may have to hunt around for a parking space. Usually the spaces in the street around are full, so you may have up to a fifteen minute walk to reach the restaurant. The outside of the restaurant was fairly attractive, nothing too special, but the sign post made it quite luring!

The restaurant was fairly attractive. If I remember correctly the floor was dark wood and the walls were a wooden too. I would have expected the restaurant to be dark and dinjy however the lights on the roof and all through the eating area were very high power and made the place look bright, but with a great "dark" atmosphere too. Our table was very roomy and probably could have seated two more people. The chairs weren't the comfiest but they were more than bearable, wooden with a red cushion attatched to the "bum area". The table was wood but was covered in a red table cloth, matching the cushions on the seats. On the table were a knife and fork for everybody, a red napkin, salt and pepper pots and some sugar and milk.

We had only been sitting at our table for around two minutes when the same man who showed us to our table reappeared. He asked if we would like to order drinks and we agreed. My brothers and I quickly opted for a glass of coke, my mum decided to study the drinks menu further.
The drinks were printed on a seperate page of the menu and displayed alot of choice. From soft drinks such as lemonade and coca cola, cocktails, wines, and other alchoholic drinks. My mum opted for a red wine and as soon as we had ordered our drinks waiter darted off to fetch us our refreshments. He returned around 4 minutes later with a tray. The glasses of coke were huge, and my mum was thrilled with the size of the glass of red wine. The waiter told us somebody would be over shortly to take our orders for our starters, so we began studying the menu, deciding what to chose. This caused a lot of problems. There was a huge choice, including; potato skins stuffed with cheeses, bacon and herbs and spices, and nachos which were described as being loaded with cheese and served with a lovely salsa. Aswell as the individual starters, Hard Rock has a special "group starter" which is a combination of all of the delicious starters, perfect for sharing. We decided to buy 3 starters and share them between us.
We opted for cheese garlic bread, potato skins and onion rings. After placing our order, they only took around five minutes to come which was a bonus.
The portions were big, but not huge and we did manage to polish almost everything off. The onion rings were gorgeous, however they were very greasy and it was obvious they had been fried and weren't very healthy. The garlic bread was delicious and surprisngly un-greasy, it did have a very cheesy taste to it but still tasted of a lovely garlic bread. The potato skins were scrumptious too but probably my least favourite out of the three, they were extremely cheesy and very strong. My brother enjoyed most of these! It took us around 15 minutes to polish off our starter and almost immediatly another waiter, this time a red haired girl came over to take our main course orders.

My cheeseburger meal was gorgeous. The burger was juicy and moist, and was topped with 4 slices of scrumptious cheese, and had a choice of tomato sauces, mayonnaises and mustards in a little pot on the side of my plate. The fries were scrumptious too, they were fairly chunky, and didn't feel to greasy. I didn't touch the salad as i'm not too keen on dressings, however it consisted of lettuce, cucumber and rather soggy looking tomato. The dressing was a brown sort of colour, quite horrible looking actually.
Brother number 1 was thrilled with the macaroni cheese meal he had ordered. It was roasting hot when it arrived which was a good thing, and it actually took him five minutes to easily eat it. Apparantly it was really cheesy but not strong cheese which suited him perfectly. The chips were the same as mine, and the mac cheese meal didn't come with salad. Not that he would have eaten it anyway.
Brother number 2 is slightly more picky when it comes to food, so he was slightly anxious about what his meal would entail. The chicken club sandwich was on toasted white bread, mounted high in chicken, bacon and some salad. He picked the salad off but otherwise he was very pleased with his meal, again the chips and salad were the same.
My mum, like us all was absolutly amazed by the high quality of her food. The fahitas came on a large brown tray, a bit like make-your-own-meal. She was provided with four floured tortillas which were warm, and in two different pots was shredded chicken and what I think was shredded beef but I can't be sure. There were various other little pots too, including tomato salsa, sour cream and a green looking substance which she said wasnt very nice.
Our main courses were all delicious and we polished them all of without a word (minus the salad). After around half an hour the waiter came to collect our dishes and then arrived five minutes later with a dessert menu. We hadn't really even been considering dessert as we were all so satisfyed with our main courses but when the menu came our excuse was it was too rude not to order a sweet, so we studied the menu carefully.

After our meal we were all feeling stuffed so we decided it was time to go for a short walk, so we called on a waiter to bring over the bill. He arrived 5 minutes later with an ashtray looking dish containing a small peice of paper and 4 chocolate truffles. My mum will not tell me how much the meal cost but she does stress it wasn't a cheap meal out.

The HRC also sells merchandise in the restaurant in a small "shop". The shop sells things such as clothing, mugs, keyrings etc. We decided not to buy anything as the meal had been so expensive and the memorabilia was quite pricey too! They definitly know how to scam our money out of us.