Near Piccadilly Station, an atmospheric basement dining room offering grazing (and other) dishes as good as any in Manchester; the extraordinary value of our lunch here suggests that this may indeed become the ‘destination’ the city-centre so desperately craves.
Michael Caines, chef of Gidleigh Park in Devon, is one of Britain’s top toques. In recent years, he’s gone into partnership with Andrew Brownsword (who made a considerable fortune with his epoynmous greeting card company) to create a national chain of food-led hotels, ABode. Manchester is the the fourth outlet, after Cheltenham, Exeter and Canterbury, and the first in a big city.
With its ‘warehouse’-style bedrooms – think large, lofty and comfortable, if not always with much natural light – the hotel part of the operation seems largely unchanged from its former days as the boho-chic ‘Rossetti’.
We were told that much of the effort during the six-month pre-launch closure has been on the food side of the operation, with the main emphasis on the former basement bar, which is now a fine dining room. It’s still not a super-smart room, but it’s a comfortable place, with an agreeably louche atmosphere.
Any doubts that this should be regarded as a fine dining room, however, may be set aside, because Caines (two Michelin stars at Gidleigh) has said so. He has also put on record his hope that this is the room which will finally win for Manchester the star which has eluded the city for the past two decades. To this end, his former home base head chef, Ian Matfin, has been put in charge.
And, indeed, the lunch we had here was the best-value meal we have had in England this year. Our bill for a nicely-lubricated (but not boozy) lunch – for two – came to just over £52. Think that’s good? If we hadn’t started with a glass of champagne apiece, the bill would have been £33 – for two, don’t forget. For this sum, we got two ‘grazing’ dishes each – of the nature of a crisply-flavoured tuna tartare, and an unctuous raviolo – with a pudding, plus a selection of well-matched tasting samples of wine. An enjoyable meal, with no duff notes at all, and truly convivial. Service was rather slow, but – in the authentically Mancunian style – was also very friendly.
By night, there is, naturally, no fantastic-value set menu. There’s still a choice of menus, though. If you wish, you can still ‘graze’, but more expensively as the dishes come individually priced. Or you can dine in classic à la carte mode, with main courses somewhere round the £20 mark. (And, for lounge lizards, which abound in these parts, there’s also a bar menu.)
Grossing up from our lunch, we’d guess that the evening dishes would be capable of rising to the challenge of their somewhat elevated prices. And, if that’s the case, perhaps Manchester may finally – after the recent litany of city-centre disasters – have found that elusive starry culinary champion. But it’s early days, of course, and time will tell.
‘¢ In the light of our lunch the previous day, and given that it’s also blessed with the initials of the main man, we had high expectations of breakfast in the ground-floor MC Café Bar. These were, however, not realised.
We all know that English ‘Viennoiserie’ is generally weak (the capital not excluded) but surely they could do better than these waxy croissants and misshapen pain-chocolats? And even the fry-up didn’t cut the mustard. When you think how proud they are in Lancashire of all the relevant types of produce, that really isn’t good enough at all.
