American shows like Man V Food and Diners, Drive Ins and Dives, which have infiltrated various UK TV channels, are starting to have an impact on British food culture.

Not only are restaurants starting to introduce eating challenges, but American-style food is becoming more common in restaurants aimed at the student and young professional market.

One of these trends is American-style BBQ, which is food slow cooked in a smoker, unlike British style BBQ, which Americans refer to as grilling.

Town centre restaurant Gringos has jumped on this new trend, changing its menu from purely Mexican fare to more TexMex.

With not having booked, and wanting to take advantage of their buy one get one free offer, we headed down not long after their 5pm opening on a Saturday night.

The buy one get one free offer is brilliant for the budget conscious, featuring most of the starters and four of the main dishes. This deal only applies to meals ordered before 7pm so it’s probably better to book if you want to be seated around this time.

The atmosphere in Gringos is quite chilled, with music playing at just the right level: loud enough to enjoy but not too loud to drown out any conversation.

When we arrived we were led through the maze of tables to be seated. The tables are quite close together so getting to the table is not always easy if you have bulky shopping.

We decided to share starters and opted for the nachos with chili beef and the cheesy jalapeños.

The nachos arrived in a pile topped with salsa, cheese, sour cream, jalapeños and, in our case, chili beef.

On the whole the nachos were good and seemed a popular choice going by our neighbouring diners, but unfortunately the amount of moisture produced by the addition of the chili made the bottom layer a bit soggy, which I think is a matter of personal preference.

The cheesy jalapeños featured cheese-filled chili peppers with a crispy coating, deep fried and served on a bed of salad with a sweet chili dipping sauce.

The coating gave it a nice bite, which was followed by the sharp heat of the jalapeños. This was finished off nicely with the creaminess of the cheesy filling, while a sweet heat countered the sharpness of the jalapeños provided by the chili sauce.

The leafy salad, served with the main courses, was topped with a spicy mayonnaise-like dressing, which was unusually flavoured but not unpleasant .

For our mains, as we were going for the offer, we had the choice of burritos, enchiladas, chimichangas or fajitas, with a choice of meats and veggie options. The first three were also served with a choice of spicy rice or wedges.

I chose to have a pulled pork enchilada, which was some of the best I’ve ever had. It was melt-in-the-mouth and went well with the crunch of the wedges.

My hubby went for a chicken burrito, and although the pieces of chicken were large, he didn’t feel there was enough. On the other hand, our friend’s beef burrito seemed to be bursting with meat.

One thing we did notice was that the two different burritos seemed to come with different sauces, with the slightly sweeter sauce in the beef burrito coming out the favourite.

Although the menu states deserts are available on the blackboards, we didn’t notice a desert board, just some tempting cocktail promotions.

But by the time we had finished our main courses we were too full for a pudding and decided to eschew desert this time.