Béres sandwich shop is a delicious advert for Sheffield

I am an OAP now living in Grimsby. Until that day, I had not visited Sheffield for 15 years and even then, my previous visits had been rare and fleeting.

But on his football highlights programme Colin Murray had a curious habit of waxing lyrical about a particular hot pork sandwich whenever mentioning either Sheffield club.

I wondered who were these Béres people? I looked them up.

And it being 6am on Boxing Day I suddenly had the notion of us driving to Sheffield to taste this delicacy.

I am not completely gaga, so I thought I'd check if they would be open.

I could not ring them as they obviously would not be open at 6am so I went to Google and I spotted all the usual names were open – McDonald's, KFC, Burger King…

So I thought surely Béres will be open too? I checked out their outlets and settled on their factory branch near Sheffield Wednesday's stadium.

Off we drove.

We got to the shop at about 10.30am and there was zero sign of life. Oh dear. What to do now?

Well, we used Google and sought out the two nearest branches, visited them and drew a blank also. Their shutters were down.

So then faced with a fait accompli, we turned our car around, and headed back home, with our tails between our legs.

And when we got home, the first thing I did was to sit down and write to Béres to express my disappointment.

I was not prepared for what followed...

For five minutes after clicking "send", our phone rang. And it was Mr Richard Béres their managing director.

What a true gent he is.

He spent nearly 45 minutes on the phone. A real star.

He broke the news to me that his outlets in central Sheffield were in fact all open... only the suburban ones that I had visited were closed. (Ouch! That hurt.)

And he added that I could have gleaned this info had I visited their Facebook page.

I pointed out to Richard that I am not a member of Facebook, so never thought of it.

Our conversation ended with him inviting myself and wife to let him know when we could revisit, so then he could meet us and push the boat out for us.

After we had talked, I put his suggestion to my wife she was very grateful, but like me, we concluded that there was no way that we wanted to accept special treatment. It was, after all, our own mistake.

Fast forward to Monday, January 4 2021 and I found myself in Sheffield, as I was making my first visit to your city since the Boxing Day debacle to see the Mi Amigo memorial.

And realising how close Endcliffe Park was to Hillsborough, I thought "why not get a hot pork sandwich?"

And get one I did. And I told the staff the story.

They were entranced. They insisted that I have it "on the house". They could not have been nicer to me, an adopted Grimbarian.

Complete with masks/visors they presented me with my culinary delight.

What a fine advert they are for both their company and their city.