A weird situation, in Manchester, population 500,000:

It’s just plain difficult to buy a decent meal here. No. Really.

When we were downtown, at Piccadilly Gardens yesterday … nothing more alluring than the Burger King was open around the landmark park or up Market Street, the city’s main drag. Yes. A downtown. With nothing but a fast-food restaurant and coffee shops.

So, today, we headed over toward Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, in search of a traditional English pub. Old Trafford and pubs. You would think those concepts would be linked and would have open seats, two nights before the Olympic soccer begins there.

You would be wrong. We walked the 1.5 miles over there, from MediaCityUK, and … nothing. It’s as if the whole area is one industrial/warehouse zone. My memory, from a couple of decades back, of a homey English pub about every 50 yards inside towns … not applicable any more.

We finally stopped a local guy who was walking, like we were, and asked him: “Is there a regular, ol’ neighborhood pub anywhere around here?”

He thought about it for a moment and said, “No. Not really.”

He said a couple of “football-type pubs” could be found on the other side of the stadium, if we took Sir Matt Busby Way (Busby: former Manchester United coach) “to the end.”

He also described them, however, as “rubbish” … and came up with one rousing recommendation: “Sam’s Chop House!”

However, it was not within walking distance, and his directions were less than precise. He advised taking the tram back toward downtown, getting off “when you begin to see taller buildings and ask anyone for directions; they will know it.”

We thanked him for his advice, but it seemed a bit imprecise, and it was already 7 p.m. (which is when just about everything in this town shuts down), so Sam’s Chop House was out.

So, we returned in the direction of our hotel, and toward the two restos we had seen in front of an outlet mall. One was a Sizzler-type restaurant, and that wasn’t going to work, and the other was a sports bar. OK. We can try that.

We sat down and waited. And waited. And were ignored. The tables were a mess (we tried two), the menu we found on a table was stained and dog-eared, and the place was generally dirty, and after a few minutes of pondering, “Are we supposed to go in and get our drinks, and then order food? What’s the deal here?” we gave up and left.

(The employees at retail outlets and restaurants are particularly awful in this town. It’s impressive how bad they are. Apathy plus incompetence plus bad manners takes effort.)

Now, back to the two restaurants in the main part of MediaCityUK — a Japanese noodle house and the Italian place, both of which we already had eaten at once. But we were about out of choices and time. I mean, it was 7:30!

So, back to the Italian place, where the help is equally lame but the food is decent.

It was a warm night, about 75 degrees, and we sat on the patio, and we ordered wild mushroom and pesto ravioli and  pollo Siciliana with proscuitto and a salad … and a pint of Peroni beer on tap, and a hard cider.

That’s me (photo above) in front of the restaurant, very happy I have a beer, at least. I was pleased; we had found someone to take our money.

It is impressive, though, how few the eateries are, where we have been. And almost everything we have seen is a chain thing (including the Italian and Japanese restos).

Perhaps some mom-and-pop pubs remain in this town, places where you can get shepherd’s pie and steak-and-kidneys … but we haven’t found them yet.