What we talk about when we talk about doughnuts: Breakfast at Common

Common is dead, long live Common. The old Common is no more. Yeah, it was a little beat up around the edges, but what gives? I liked the fact that the walls looked like a bizarro comic book. I liked the booths. I liked the day-to-night menu of casual eats and, sometimes, root beer. The whole thing was as comfortable as an old pair of jeans, dammit.

But earlier this year Common decided it wanted more out of life. Common looked around and realised it was time to grow up. Why? I have my theories. There's money to be made on Edge Street now. Whatever's at street level and isn't being turned into a speciality tequila bar or a cafe hawking £5 goji-guava detox shots is (or will soon be) a restaurant, because this is where people want to part with their leisure money. Say you found yourself in possession of a bar and restaurant unit smack bang in the middle of this. Wouldn't you raise your game and go for the kind of customers who aren't going to spend 3 hours hogging a table with their laptop and a couple of Americanos? I would.

Anyhoo, when the newspapers came off the windows there was a more foodily ambitious menu. There was table service, FFS. And decorating. Out with the loungetastic booths, in with wooden stools. Common now has the intentional blankness of interiors in a Saturday magazine supplement (architect duo Isaac and Caroline converted the former Balham Brush Works on a shoestring at just £2.3m) The crockery is covetable, the light fittings unique. It looks great. If it was a new restaurant, I'd probably eat there and like it. It's just, well... why'd they have to do it in Common?

Yet look under the surface and there's still some rough in this diamond. The astonishingly strong craft beer roster is still there. The trusty burgers are still there, and it's still a good place to hang out once you get used to it, though the clientele has definitely changed. And, with vastly expanded sub-noon offerings, it's now a solid choice for breakfast and brunch, my favourite two meals of the day.

Where to eat is a crucial decision if you're feeling way delicate following a long night; the wrong choice here could bruise your soul. You need somewhere comfortable where they are going to smile and play okay music and feed you nice things and you can pretend you're not in public while reanimating yourself with gallons of coffee beverage. If this is how it is with you, I prescribe Common's cured salmon, asparagus and poached egg bathed in hollandaise on a slice of Trove sourdough; like a cooler Eggs Benedict. One particularly fragile Saturday it sorted me right out. My brunch buddy went for small plates from the lunch/dinner menu which I guess is something people do, but he spent the meal looking longingly at my eggs.

Another weekend, in slightly sounder fettle, I tried the shak shuka, a skillet of eggs baked in a sweetly piquant mixture of spiced tomatoes and peppers, accompanied by more of that heroic sourdough, and was glad I did. My companion's Full English received cautious approval. Yes, the portions weren't as big as you get elsewhere, and no black pudding, but the impeccable quality of each individual component got it a thumbs up. We ate in the front bit not the dining room and we both appreciated eating in a space light and airy enough to nudge us into the idea of daytime. They had the papers in, too.

Oh. Wait. We need to talk about doughnuts. Common has unexpectedly started cranking out the most incredible doughnuts right there in their basement kitchens. They fill them with all sorts of stuff like banana custard or vanilla and plum jam or (gasp) ice cream down there. Those who want to try them should get there early as they regularly sell out. If you're the kind of person who likes that sort of thing, you may flip out and want to bulk buy them and you can do this easily because they sell them by the dozen and half dozen, pre-order only. They are really freaking fantastic doughnuts and you will pay £18 for a dozen. Yes, £18. That's only £1.50 a doughnut, which, well... I dunno, I suppose it's all about your priorities. Some people in those Saturday magazines pay £60 for a single lipstick (!!!!) Is it wrong? Is it right? I donut know.

Common, 39-41 Edge St. Northern 1/4, Manchester M4 1HW. Breakfast menu served 10am-2pm daily. Full disclosure: Common asked me to come in and have a meal on them and write a review. For this post I went once on their dime and once on my own. And they're not giving me free doughnuts. Though, you know, I wouldn't say no to one.

Review: High Tea in Wonderland, Manchester International Festival

Performances that involve food make me nervous. One of the reasons I became a food writer was a predilection for the theatre of the restaurant, the entrances and exits in the stage set of the dining room, the sensory drama running counterpoint to the little dramas unfolding at every table and behind the kitchen doors. In my experience, adding actual theatre to proceedings can make for cringey times.

But ex-Aumbry chef Mary-Ellen McTague's name in connection with High Tea in Wonderland is enough to make me risk a food/theatre mashup. The chef who built a national reputation in two-knocked together terraces in Prestwich has always seemed like the kind of person who is rightly careful about the projects she will attach her name to. And I don't mind telling you I am excited like a giddy little girl about the opening of her new restaurant in the Roadhouse site this Autumn. Even if the theatre was shocking, I knew we'd eat well.

Threatening to upstage the food and the acting was the setting, the upper chambers of the neo-Gothic Manchester Museum, where its botanical collections are stored. We were granted rare access to the garrety attic bits of the spectacular building: curved ceilings, secret tower rooms, wallsfull of ancient wood storage drawers and baize green catalogue boxes with the odd taxidermied animal grinning from an  unlikely corner. At last, I have found my dream office suite!

We were led around by a very dapper white rabbit, pelting up the stairs after him into a series of rooms where we encountered the characters from Carroll's story in proper sequence. My favourite was the turbaned Catepillar, an actor I recognised from something but can't place. Her languid take on the hookah-puffing master of psychedelia was spot on, her barbed exchanges with the audience keeping us all delightfully wrongfooted. It well judged; no ghastly dinner theatre here but just enough of a taste of performance to keep us engaged.

And of course, there was the food. We started off with a tea party, sweet little cakes and teapots arranged on a long work table amid flowers and botanical samples in a display that would give Cath Kidston multiple orgasms. Then in each new stop on the tour, there was something tasty to eat or drink with a clever link back to Carroll. In the catepillar's lair we got a winning combination of mushroom consomme and a delicate pink macaroon decorated with the indelicate words BITE ME. You expected it to be sweet, but it turned out to be beetroot flavoured and filled with chicken livers.

The servers broke character to tell us about the butter content in the astonishingly rich meat pies (don't ask) and to tell us how the image of Mary-Ellen on a playing card got onto our dessert with the Queen of Hearts... Okay, look, I'm not going to go into detail about every single thing we ate, and why should I? You can't go into a restaurant and order it. All that's left are fond memories and a single teaspoon in my drawer with the words STEAL ME etched on its surface. Just following instructions.

Image courtesy Mary-Ellen McTague

Restaurant review: 4244 Edge Street

Halfway through our meal at 4244 Edge Street, I’m reminded of that Woody Allen quote: “Is sex dirty? Only if it’s done right.” If you can come to the end of a plate in this restaurant without running your finger along its surface to capture the last drops of sauce, you’re doing it wrong. If you can finish your bread and then not go on to scoop up the last bit of the nut brown butter neat, you’re doing it wrong. This is food that demands The Full Nigella. Granted, I may have taken things a bit too far when I finished off a little dish of beef dripping and pan juices by pouring it directly into my mouth. To her credit, our server smiled and pronounced me her favourite customer of the night. “It’s so deliciously wicked, isn’t it?” she said. “Would you like some more?”

And to think this sort of thing is happening in the back of Teacup. When I heard the sainted Mary Ellen McTague was opening a pop up here while her Prestwich restaurant, Aumbry, was being renovated, I wasn’t sure how it would work. The answer is: fine. It doesn’t feel much like the back of Teacup, though you can see people in the cafe. The lighting from the open kitchen shines out like floodlights – but some German botanical prints and an antique dresser have been employed to good effect. As at Aumbry, the china and silver are old fashioned and mismatched, and the big, nubbly linen napkins look like the sort of thing a Victorian housewife might have done the washing up with. They probably cost about £45 each, but they’re intensely covetable.

4244 is serving a single menu, four courses for £50 with wine on top (pairings at £36). Eccentricities abound: The wine list is all Croatian as they genuinely love the wines and want to showcase small producers from the country. I’m on board with that as long as they’re all as good as the big, powerful Cattunar Teran, which knocked us sideways like a fist swathed in silk. They make their own bread from biodynamic flour – yep, grown according to the phases of the moon – no idea if this makes any difference, but it’s the chewy, rustic stuff I love. And there’s that butter (made in Bolton). And the dripping. Ah, the dripping.

The food is exactly what you'd get at Aumbry, but no need to do anything new as this is a different audience. A frankly ridiculous number of good amuses was followed by wild mushrooms with curds, hay ash and birch powder. The textures were punched up with crispy, soft rounds of homemade malt loaf – but the taste balance was edgy. McTague likes bold, at times downright peculiar taste combinations and I love eating food like this, but it’s dangerous cooking. With this many powerful flavours shouting at once the result is not always completely harmonious. I don't mind that, though. It's the opposite of comfort food, and I mean that as a compliment.

Hare consommé reminded me a lot of a dish I’d had at The French, which I’d argue is the only place in town serving better food than this right now: cubes of barely cooked turnip, daringly rare rabbit and a rich, tepid broth poured from a wee teapot. But the star of the night was a slow cooked partridge pie of unsurpassing loveliness. Again, the textures were so beautifully balanced, and here the taste combinations were spot on, with the mellow shards of savoy cabbage, flaky homemade pastry, cooked-to-meltingness meat and the sweet pan reduction mingling with the celeriac cream.

Ratafia pudding is one of those 18th Century dishes of the sort that McTague likes to ferret out of her vintage cookbooks. Given the choice, I’d never order it. Thankfully, I didn’t have a choice. A cube of Cox’s Pippin, clear red and baked until buttery perched on a slab of sweet pastry, like a deconstructed Tarte Tatin with a dash of intensely cidery sauce. My Cattunar Muskat Ruza was pleasantly dry and green for a dessert wine, though I wished I’d gone back and ordered another glass of that glorious red instead. Next time. For I’m going to be saving up to get back there again before 4244’s six week run is over. Greedy? Maybe. But when it comes to this woman’s cooking I have very little self control.

2014 in Manchester

Oh sacred magic eight ball, what will 2014 bring us? This year, Cornerhouse will empty out, that iconic curved marquee going dark or advertising cheap payday loans while the arty folk go west to First Street, where HOME is being built. Ah wait, no, looks like the opening has been pushed back to Spring 2015, so enjoy it while you can. I'm having a hard time warming to either the new name or the basic concept of  Cornerhouse not existing anymore, but who knows?  I'm also looking forward to seeing the new Whitworth expansion this Autumn, designed to blur the lines between the gallery and the adjacent, sadly underused park. For other arty upcomings across the North, see Creative Tourist's freshly minted Cultural Calendar.

Traditional pubs are closing, apparently. In recent days The Lass O' Gowrie, The Black Lion in Salford and chef Mark Owen Brown's Mark Addy gastropub have announced closures (at least temporarily.) The Fiction Stroker has a good analysis of the background to the first two closings and the consequences for the city's fringe theatre and performance scenes. What's opening this year? More Mexican, burger and barbecue joints, naturally. A new branch of the Leeds-based Red's True Barbecue is opening soon, and I've heard a rumour about a Pancho's Burritos restaurant that I fervently hope is true.

This spring the new Central Library will open. I'm pretty excited about this. Because, after all the controversy (Book purges! Public streets becoming glassed-in private property!) we get a new library, a more comfortable but still spectaculary old and fancy one with new space for events and children's activities. Let's just hope it's not the only library that's still open in Greater Manchester by 2015. How's yours doing? The little library in Ramsbottom, where I live, is going self-service, and they're apparently turning a substantial chunk of the big one in Bury into a sculpture centre. But hey, they're not closing. Yet.

Image courtesy of Modern Designers.

Manchester restaurants: Solita review

I’ve been sceptical about Solita, the restaurant in the Northern Quarter. First they were an upscale seafood restaurant, Sole, then re-branded last year as Solita with an Americanised casual menu big on the ribs and dirty burgers etc. that UK foodies were going apeshit for around that time, which could be interpreted as a cynical move. Also, I get suspicious if restaurants are too good at social media, because in my experience social media prowess and quality of food are inversely proportional. Solita is very good at social media. They seem to emit a constant stream of blogger tasting sessions, pictures of burgers in progress and lots of tweeting with the Manc fooderati. They're unusually hip to cultural trends. James Gandolfini's passing was honoured with a special Tony Soprano burger; a recent Breaking Bad-themed dinner sold out in record time. They get buzz. I just wasn’t sure how much of it was justified.

Also, it’s a little expensive. I’ve done a couple of drive-bys but the fact that most starters weigh in at £6 and it’s hard to find a main for under a tenner put me off, especially when they’re serving up this kind of food. I don’t care how good it is, I’d feel like an asshole paying £10.90 for a hot dog. So when they contacted me to see if I wanted to come down to sample their summer menu (at their expense, you dig) I wasn't sure. It was possible I’d been avoiding a real gem for silly reasons. I mean, everybody in Manchester seems to love the place so much, and you know all those food bloggers weren’t just high on all the food, drink and cameraderie, right?

So anyway, I went. 

The evening’s drink special, an herby and cool sloe gin fizz, was a very auspicious beginning to our dinner. My friend and I were sat upstairs in the fairly spartan dining room where we admired the gigantic red neon sign that says SOUL, the Modesty Blaise frames decorating the wall, the classic R&B soundtrack and the unusually friendly and self-assured service. Downstairs lurks a darker, cosier dining space.

A starter of beer boiled shrimp tasted good – the Old Bay butter brought back happy memories of Maryland crab feasts – but they were small, and when you have to shuck ‘em yourself you want more reward for the labour. The "Lucky 7"; a Tex-Mex seven-layer dip, was a surprise. It’s the kind of thing you find at PTA dinners and barbeques across the states; my mom made it all the time. Seeing it on a menu in Manchester is slightly surreal. Solita's version is standard, with beans, salsa, sour cream, guac and cheese etc. served with the tasty blue corn chips that are tough to find over here. In a similarly nostalgic vein, they're currently serving up a blooming onion, a deep-fried artery-blocking staple of county fairs. Fried dough (doused with butter, powdered sugar and cinnamon) can surely not be far behind. God help us all.

Tuna tartare was fresh raw tuna chunked in a bowl, served with tiny bowls of toppings (minced avocado, tomato and radish; sesame seeds) and toasted bread slices. The overall effect was a little bland, with the ingredients failing to get a very interesting conversation going; I would have liked a stronger wasabi flavour from the oil, which fell through the toast holes and made an almighty mess.  After this, the prawns and the fondue, our table looked like the aftermath of a fantastic food fight.

They decided what to send us, which was how we ended up eating burger fondue, a gimmicky thing I’d be unlikely to order anytime but definitely not during a heatwave. The cheese fondue was good. The burger was small, probably for dipping purposes, served in a soft sesame-topped bun avec mustard et ketchup a la Mickey D’s. The meat was dark reddish pink inside, which was fine by me, but the texture was oddly smooth, and there was practically no char on the outside. It was all right in the context of fondue but if that’s the kind of burger they do generally I’d have problems with it. The pudding was a sticky toffee apple pie with fantastic Cabrelli's vanilla ice cream. I loved everything about the pie – flaky crust and the right ratio of apple to caramel topping. I would come back for this alone.

Overall, we ate well. You get the impression that Solita is trying hard to do something different, and I like the sense of fun about the place. So, for that I’ll forgive them for being too good at social media and for naming themselves after a trendy Manhattan neighbourhood. Heck, I'll even consider forgiving them for serving a £10.90 hot dog. I probably won’t eat there all the time, but I'd go back for a special occasion dinner. And I plan to investigate their lunch menu, which is a lot more wallet-friendly (mains at £5.95.) and includes good sounding-stuff like a pulled pork cheese toastie, a meatball sub and a grilled chicken caesar salad.

The Market Mystery: New shit has come to light

When I started working in the Northern Quarter a decade ago, The Market stood out. It had a personality of its own in a city where few restaurants did. There was never anything fashionable about the green and white place on the corner of Edge and High Streets, its name a tribute to the long-gone Smithfield produce market. It was just the quaint side of twee, the opposite of Modern British: Old Fashioned British, and vaguely continental in its drift. The menu was small, the service friendly, the food delicious. It was the site of my first happy encounters with an Omelette Arnold Bennett and a Kir Royal. I ate there maybe ten times over the years, never had a bad meal and recommended it to people all the time. Maybe half the time I'd hear back that they'd had a less than amazing meal or actually thought I was nuts for sending them there. But I also knew people who felt the way I did about it. The place seemed to inspire this sort of crazy devotion. The people who liked it really liked it.

I heard it had been sold a few years back to someone who liked it the way it was and visited for the last time not long after the handover and ate well. I heard mixed reviews about the place after that, so it wasn't an enormous surprise when I walked by last week and saw that it had been shuttered and painted tomato red. Some snooping around the neighbourhood revealed only that the new tenant had something to do with Kahlua and pigeons. Confusing. Then I read yesterday that its going to be the site of a pop-up Mexican Coffee House sponsored by Kahlua, involving the creative minds from Teacup and Cakes and The Liquorists. I'm still not sure how the pigeons got in there, but all will surely be revealed. It's also unclear whether The Market will be back afterwards, though the restaurant's twitter feed seems to indicate that it will.

Granted, I'm pretty much the walking target demographic of a place that serves Mexican food, screens The Big Lebowski and Duck Soup and slings drinks made with Kahlua, a heavenly liquor I have been eagerly consuming since the age of 16 when I used to haul a bottle and a gallon of milk to keg parties. But I'd be sad if the Market didn't return. There's a lot more choice and variety in the city's restaurant scene today than there was even ten years ago, and it's easy to see how the place fell out of step with its upwardly-trendy neighbourhood (the arrival of the sleek Northern Quarter Restaurant right across the street was probably the beginning of the end for the restaurant in its old incarnation.) Still, I can't help but feel that a Northern Quarter that doesn't have room for The Market is a smaller, less interesting place. After the four-week pop-up pops off, let's hope it comes back in top form.

Eating local in Ramsbottom

Over the past few months, two tired old pubs have reopened under new ownership, all shiny and newly kitted out, with food of a quality to create a stir around my 'hood of Ramsbottom. I'm talking about The Eagle and Child and Hearth of the Ram. Both are doing the same kind of thing: enlightened updates of the sort of hearty fare that Lancashire mill workers would have eaten. If you're a fan of the food at Nigel Haworth's Ribble Valley Inns, or Robert Owen Brown's cooking at The Mark Addy, you'll know just what to expect. Inventive uses of black pudding? Check. Offal? Check. Local producers namechecked on menu? Check. Old school puddings? Check. It's crowd-pleasing stuff.

I was impressed by The Eagle and Child, just a short walk up the hill from Ramsbottom centre in the village of Shuttleworth. It's got all the earmarks of a great local, a comfortable but not fussy interior with nice views over the valley and fireplaces for chilly days, and a family-friendly atmosphere. Impressively, they've worked with the Incredible Edible Ramsbottom group to create an edible beer garden behind the pub which will grow food for the kitchens, and there is an innovative apprenticeship programme in place.

The food was very good, with generous portions served in a pleasantly relaxed fashion. My starter, a salad of new peas, broad beans, nuts and goats cheese in a light, sweet dressing was fresh-tasting and moreish. The perfect foil to my burger, a toothsome mouthful on a foccacia bun. It was a traditional British approach to the burger (season the beef and cook it through) rather than the American one I prefer, but pretty good for all that. The Lancashire cheese and tomato relish in there was a nice touch. Extra points for near-perfect onion rings.

My friend's fish pie tasted amazing but proved tricky to eat as it was so liquid it threatened to cross the border into souptown. For dessert, we demolished a plant pot full of tiramisu. With a few leaves stuck in the top layer of chocolate biscuit crumbs it was almost too adorable to eat, but not quite.We left full and happy.

Just down the hill near the banks of the Irwell is Hearth of the Ram. This pub has a different feel about it. It's more of an adult atmosphere, and I wouldn't be in a hurry to take kids here. I really like the interior, which is warm and stylish but a few shades more salvage-chic fashionable than the Eagle. When we went to celebrate a friend's birthday on a Friday night it was absolutely rammed, but some of the congestion should ease when a dining room opens upstairs. I was told it has the latest license in Ramsbottom (2:30 am, night owls) and definitely had an after hours vibe going on with some good James Brown on the stereo and lots of people drinking cocktails out of jam jars.

As you'd expect from the higher spec interior, the food is a more cheffily ambitious version of what we had at the Eagle, with microgreens, reductions and purple vegetables entering into proceedings. I ate from the a la carte menu. They offer another, lighter menu with burgers and the like at other times, but we weren't allowed to order from this menu, which seemed odd (and unfortunately prevented me from doing a burger-to-burger taste test). But I didn't really mind, as my pork cheeks were full of flavour and beautifully matched up with butternut squash and potato terrine, and the very large glass of Pinot Noir was excellent, though pretty expensive at £8. I stole a few bites of a friend's tasty rabbit and black pudding sausages, which I'll order next time. A dessert of berry baked Alaska was good but not great. The service was good, and we all enjoyed ourselves so much we ended up lingering over drinks into the wee hours. I'm really looking forward to my next visit.

A small rant: Weirdly, neither of these restaurants has prices on their menus online. It's just ridiculous not to give people some idea what they can expect to pay, especially when you're charging quite a bit more than the previous tenants for food. This is especially true at Hearth, where everything was priced just a couple of pounds higher than I thought it really needed to be. I understand they are trying to do a more ambitious thing with the food, and quality costs. But sadly, the price point means this will probably be a place I save for special occasions. The Eagle might see us more often. Nevertheless, both are extremely welcome additions to Rammy's dining scene. And with the similarly reinvented Shoulder of Mutton up Holcombe Hill apparently serving up cracking food too (though I haven't made it there yet to see for myself) this place is fast turning into gastro-pub heaven. Something the army of walkers, day trippers and steam train aficionados who descend on the town every weekend will surely appreciate.

Images: Hearth of the Ram, top, by Robert Wade via Flickr. All other images courtesy of The Eagle and Child.

A good burger in Manchester

Finally got down to Almost Famous burgers the other night. I've been watching from a distance for weeks as the growing Manchester foodbloggerati fell hard for this temporary burger joint from the folks behind Keku Moku, Home Sweet Home and Socio Rehab. Could it be that a decent burger had finally made its way to Manchester? Reports were promising.

I ignored the whole "no bloggers no blaggers no photos" thing as a clever marketing ploy; as a signless pop-up burger joint in what appear to be empty offices in the top floor of a building in the Northern Quarter they would have been screwed if nobody had blogged or tweeted about it. Of course that did not happen, and thank god it didn't, because we want these guys to come back with their good burgers SOON. ( As an aside, anyone interested in social media marketing should take a look at their twitter feed. I imagine it being written by a kind of meat-crazed Hunter S. Thompson).

But really, who gives a shit about their marketing when their burgers are this good. They are the real deal. And yes, I say this as a burger-chomping American known to bitch about how bad the burgers are here in England. Juicy and pink in the middle, they appear to be made with 100 percent beef unadulterated by bready filler, vegetables or weird spices. You can tell all the burger research time Almost Famous' Beau Myers spent in California was put to good use (tough gig, that). Nice brioche-style bun too that wasn't too thick but got out of the way and let the meat shine. And the inclusion of rib meat and cole slaw in their Triple Nom burger was a stroke of meaty genius.

I like the gauntlet thrown down by placing a fresh cylinder of kitchen roll on the table with your food. Like, you're going to need this. And you will. The fries were good, but not quite as amazing as the boigers. It might be a regional thing; up in New England where I'm from places like this do a brisk trade in dirty, just-pulled-out-of-the-ground, cooked-until-they're-mahogany fries. But definitely nice that they added sweet potatoes to the mix. A messy barbecueish special with roadkill in the name, some fearsome looking wings, and vodka cupcakes all appealed, but I was already stuffed.

A note about the drinks: These guys seem to have a winning strategy of keeping diners likkered up. I had only to enquire about the composition of a Jack & Smack before a free shot of this potent elixr was on the bar before me. (In fairness, though, I had tweeted that I was coming and am pretty easy to spot, so maybe they were especially forthcoming.) The cocktails are head-scrambling mixtures with punchy names like Bitch Juice. This combined with their opening hours (weekends only, late nights) and position sprawled in the lap of about a hundred NQ bars make the atmosphere boozy and convivial. This is a good thing. It's nice to have a place to eat good food where you can really kick back, but, you know, leave the kids at home.

If you're going you'll have to be quick (and prepared to queue; last Friday there was a line from around 5:30; so good news that they're opening around 1pm this Friday. For evening eats, arriving after 9 or 10 might be a better strategy). This weekend's their last before this incarnation of Almost Famous closes, but there are intimations that a more permanent venue might open at some point in the future. Hurry up, burger dudes. Manchester needs your patties.

Monster burger illustration by NOF artherapy.

Indian Summer

With two big festivals I'm involved in — Creative Tourist's Manchester Weekender and The Manchester Literature Festival — right around the corner, I've been insanely busy and never seem to have the time to pootle around the city the way I used to. Yes, there's been a complete absence of pootling, not much pottering and certainly no meandering for as long as I can remember. But with the insane Indian Summer we had going on last Friday I gave myself an afternoon and evening for some good old fashioned moseying around Manchester. First I went to my favourite city centre park: St. John's Gardens. You know Piccadilly Gardens? It's pretty much the opposite of that. Clean, green and leafy, quiet — and in Friday's heat, kinda sleepy. I lay down on the grass listening to music and almost fell asleep.

Then I went to The Book Barge. It's a floating bookshop shoehorned into a narrowboat that has been moored at Castle Quay for a few days. I was imagining a musty, dusty floating cabinet of curiosities. But it is nothing like that: clean and light, with a clever use of space and an immaculate stock of intelligently curated new books, serendipitous seconhand ones, a thoughfully-selected children's section and the sort of ephemera that book lovers drool over (Penguin tote bags, unjustly obscure magazines, bunting.) I ran into Adrian from The Art of Fiction. And I picked up a Puffin of Joan Aiken's The Whispering Mountain for £1. So I was happy.

I spoke with proprietor Sarah Henshaw about The Book Barge in this audioboo: The Book Barge comes to Manchester (mp3)

After a lovely few days in our city The Book Barge is now chugging away from Manchester to Skipton for the weekend. You can follow them on Twitter at @thebookbarge


From Castlefield I walked over to the opening of Asia Triennial Manchester, one of the nicest launches I've been to in a long time. Had a good chat with artist NS Harsha about his Spiritual Garlands comissioned by the amazing John Rylands Library. The garlands are intricate chains of individually-sculpted heads visitors to the library can wear around their necks, the chains emphasizing the way that ideas and knowledge pass from one person to another via books. I wished I could have gone on to Cornerhouse to see Rashid Rana but will have to save that for another time.

Then some very important business. Namely, barbecue. Our city recently became home to two new barbecue joints and after hearing good things from a number of people I headed over to Southern Eleven at Spinningfields. My first impressions weren't great. Too many hard shiny surfaces, which in addition to seeming uncomfortably trendy also meant it was loud. But we were able to sit on the patio. The staff were absolutely wonderful — they really took care of us. And the other thing I want to emphasize about this place is it's an amazing deal: low prices and big portions. We didn't leave feeling like we'd just been mugged, as is so often the case when dining out in Manchester.

I do love my barbecue, so I'm happy to report that the food was good. Pork belly ribs came with a brush-on pot of barbecue sauce and were nicely executed, though would have been better if a little more of the fat had been rendered on mine. Mac n' cheese was mighty fine. Onion rings and fries were both overseasoned; the first with chilli, the second with a superfluous combo of parmesan and truffle oil (and unfortunate that they were the pale, weedy kind instead of the skin-on, dark brown artisan variety that seem to be all the the rage in the USA these days.) Jalapeno cornbread tasted good but was a bit too fine and cakey in texture. And the Tennessee Rose cocktail I had was tall, pink, icy and flowery - just the drink for such a tropical evening. I forgot to take any pictures, but The Greedy Girl has just reviewed it as well and has some lovely pics on her site, so pop over there if looking at 'cue is what you wanna do.

NS Harsha Thought Mala image courtesy Asia Triennial Manchester

Fress to impress

Aloha, shalom and Happy New Year. I'm back from my maternal sabbatical to return to regular, or at least, regularly intermittent, blogging service. And I'm here to talk about food.

First, I'd like to call your attention to the resurgence of the foodie blogging scene in Manchester. Erstwhile Mancunian Foodie Sarah has cooked up a tasty little google map with all the food bloggers in the north of England plotted on it. Thanks Sarah! I'm adding the foodie bloggers in the Manchester area to my blogroll - quite a haul including Denton duo Eat Out Eat In, Stockport's Cookbook goodness, Foodographic in Chorlton and Mancfoodian.

A bit more digging revealed a few more new additions to the food blogging category: buttered crumpet, beccabakescakes and curry fiends Flavours of Manchester. Also, I'm not sure if The Greedy Girl is based in Manchester or just a frequent visitor to our delicious city, but I'm adding her anyway. Missed anyone? Let me know.

In other foodie news, the supper club trend hasn't missed Manchester, but most of the action has been taking place in twitterland. First, Gastro Club has been making a few fressers of my acquaintance very happy indeed. If you haven't heard about it before (you might have read this excellent summary on Inside the M60) it's a growing group of hungry folk who meet on the second Tuesday of the month for a themed dinner at a city restaurant. Some nice photos of past events here including the picture above by Samscam.

It was also on twitter that I also heard about Spice Club, a monthly Indian supperclub run by Monica from her Manchester home. She blogs about cooking at Monica's Spice Diary. Nice to have some off-menu culinary action in the city. More please.

Seoul Kimchi and Bubble Cafe

Where can you get the best dumplings in Manchester? Until recently the answer to that question would have been easy: Red Chilli, where the Beijing dumplings have long reigned supreme. But a new contender has emerged: Seoul Kimchi, a tiny grocery and restaurant on Upper Brook Street that serves up Korean home cooking. Many of the Asian restaurants in Manchester don't bother to make their own dumplings and seem content to serve frozen ones shipped from thousands of miles away. So the gyoza at Seoul Kimchi are a revelation: crisp on the outside, bursting with flavour inside, you can tell from the first bite that they're the real thing.

The japchae, a fried noodle dish, and bibimbap, a rice-based dish, were also excellent. Don't leave without sampling the kimchi, the spicy pickled cabbage that Koreans eat with practically everything. And there are lots of choices for veggies. It's nice to finally have an alternative to Koreana, which is much more formal (and more expensive). Unfortunately Upper Brook Street isn't really convenient to anywhere, but you can take the 50 bus right there from Spring Gardens. There are only three or four tables, and if it's full, well, Red Chilli have opened a new location nearby on Oxford Road.

These are good times to be a foodie in Manchester. We may not have any Michelin-starred restaurants, but on the casual/ethnic side we're doing pretty well. During my time living in New York I got swept into the city's amazing foodie subculture. There are thousands of people who comb the five boroughs for the ultimate felafel, soba noodles or corned beef hash, and cultishly track the movements of favourite street food vendors on Chowhound ("The Arepa Lady is back on Roosevelt Ave!") One of my favourite foodie haunts was Sau Voi Corp, a Vietnamese record store on Lafayette Street in Chinatown with a lucrative sideline in banh mi, unbelievably addictive Vietnamese sandwiches filled with meat and veggies.

When I moved here seven years ago, not being able to get banh mi in Manchester got me down; it was like some kind of litmus test. Well, I'm happy to report that you can now get these sandwiches here. The recently opened Bubble Cafe on Portland Street sells bubble iced tea and a selection of Vietnamese snacks including pho, noodle soup and banh mi sandwiches (Bubble's Sandwich). On the day I went, they were out of pate, a grievous omission, but the baguette had ham, sliced pork, grated carrot and coriander. Instead of the usual sweet and spicy sauce, though, it was topped with some kind of weird mayonaise - not an improvement. Still, it was good, and at £3.80 for a giant sandwich it's a solid lunch option.

To Do: Homelife, food fest and blogger treats

The ever-changing Mancunian musical collective Homelife are launching their new album Exotic Interlude (out Oct 5 on Humble Soul) with a gig at Sacred Trinity on Friday. The band's latest incarnation has shrunk to founders Paddy Steer and Tony Burnside (pictured above). I've listened to the album and am really impressed with the new more mellow and folky sound emerging, but there's plenty there along the lines of their older sound, a ramshackle goody bag of surprising noise, tiki grooves and snatches of melody. This is sure to be a popular show as live Homelife appearances are rare as hen's teeth, so get in there.

Manchester bloggers are invited to join Havana rum for a shindig to launch their Havana Cultura twitter campaign/new mix CD at Cord on October 8th, preceding a Havana club night at Odder, which they will take you along to. And yes, they're handing out some booty in the form of CDs, photo books, drink mixers and free rum. Yo ho ho! If you're a blogger who's interested in attending email Krista AT theneonhub dotcom.

Any Manchester bloggers interested in covering the upcoming Conservative Party Conference should speedily contact Craig Elder (craig dot elder AT conservatives dot com) Don't think they'll be doling out free grog there, though. Oh, and in other digital gathering news, Social Media Cafe is back at The Northern, Tib Street on Tuesday October 6. FYI, I'm posting stuff like this here now but will likely move these blogger-relevant announcements over to the MCR Bloggers Facebook group, so sign up if you haven't already.

The Food and Drink Festival is set to yummify Manchester October 1-11. This year brings a brand new independent wine festival, foodie hubs at St. Ann's and Albert Squares, and all manner of special meals, food tours, talks and cocktail hours. They have a shiny new website too. Go forth and nosh.

At Urbis, 'Show & Tell' opens today and runs until Oct 12. It's an exhibition by the Urbis Creatives art collective. The exhibition will give the Urbis team a chance to show their work and tell the visitors about what they do outside of the creative environment of Urbis. It will comprise of many different disciplines from photography to illustration, painting and also projects the members are involved in such as community work and music events. For more information about the collective visit the website at www.urbiscreatives.org.

In other art happenings, the big Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism exhibition has opened at Manchester Art Gallery. And the famously difficult to please Jonathan Jones has called it "magical."Am going to this soon and will report back with a full review.

Stop! ... Rammytime

Okay. So, Ramsbottom is lovely place to live. I've only been living here for eight months and already have a hard time imagining hanging up my hat anywhere else round Manchester. You get the best of both worlds: living in what feels like a small, friendly town in the green Pennine foothills, within arm's reach of the big bad city. I know there are a few places like this about, and all have their band of loyal adherents, but I feel lucky to be here.

One thing has surprised me: I didn't expect it to be so happening around here. It'll take a lot to coax folks out of Rammy with all that's going on at the moment.

First, a long-overdue tip of the hat toThe First Chop. Less than a year old, this laid-back bar and restaurant is already feeling like a comfortable pair of old sneakers. The bottled beer selection is fantastic and they always have something good on tap. The food's just right for the place - simple but classy offerings made from carefully-sourced ingredients. Their pork kebabs with salsa verde have won my heart, and I'm trying to forget how devilishly good their chips with aioli are. Their music selection is wonderful, and they're great for the bambinos. All became clear when I learned recently that the owner came from the much-loved Jam Street Cafe, a South Manchester institution.

The Chop is at the centre of a resurgence in Rammy's nightlife, which probably needed a bit of a shot in the arm. It has always been good for food and now hosts an enviable array of eateries including Ramsons and Fishermans Retreat, China Cottage and the lovely Bailey's tea room, newcomers Chocolate Cafe, Sanminis and Buddha Lounge, and my latest happy discovery Thai restaurant Spice Garden which has been tucked away on Square Street for ages. And there are plenty of good independent butchers, greengrocers, delis and shops in the area. But after dark it feels much more like the traditional Lancashire Mill Town that it truly still is, "New Chorlton" hype aside.

Some upcoming events look set to shake things up a little. The first is Rammyfest, a free musical extravaganza unfolding over August Bank Holiday Weekend. Musicians including DJ Graeme Park and The Cordels will play in venues around town and busk outdoors. And the organisers are bridging the North-South (Manchester) divide with a handy charabanc between Chorlton and Ramsbottom to ferry folks to the festival.

The party has been organised to celebrate the launch of Ramsbottom Online, a new website set up to promote all things Ramsbottom and to act as an online hub for news and discussion about life in Rammy. They've got a blog up with some nice posts about the muy controversial new Aldi currently being built (amazingly the town's third supermarket) and the pros and cons of riding the Witch Way bus.

Next month, the big excitement is the long-anticipated return of the Ramsbottom Rhythm and Blues Festival, dormant since 2005, which Bury Met is bringing to the cricket ground the weekennd of September 26 and 27. Musicians include Matt Schofield Band, Otis Gibbs,The Ben Waters Big Band among others, plus food stalls and family activities.

Love Saves The Day becomes An Outlet

The bad news about Love Saves The Day going bust (yes, for real this time) has a silver lining: an excellent new cafe has moved into its old digs in the Carver's Warehouse, the strange, ubermodern cube on Dale Street by Piccadilly basin.

An Outlet has left some things the same (shelves lined with posh groceries, a globetrotting soup and sarnie menu) and changed many others. The interior has been given a coat of black chalkboard paint and there was a short story about someone eating clams taking up most of one wall the day I went. There are also international newspapers, interesting books to peruse, and storyboard pads and pens should genius strike mid-pain au raisin.

It has a friendly buzz like the canteen of a busy creative firm, which is probably because it is effectively the canteen of creative firm Four23, which had just relocated upstairs when LSTD crashed and clubbed together with another tenant, engineering firm Martin Stockley Associates, to prevent the site from falling into the hands of StarbucksCaffeNeroCosta. Hard to imagine that lot being interested, though. The site is far too quiet, off in the cinematic no-man's-land between the Northern Quarter, Ancoats and Piccadilly. And thanks to their free wifi, it's my new favorite place to blog on the hoof.

Which is about food

So there are good restaurants and bad restaurants when you have a baby, and which ones turn out which way is often a surprise. The Three Fishes in Mitton seemed like a good idea for a baby-friendly outing - a country gastropub run by the Northcote Manor folks. We've been before and liked the food. But with a kid we didn't feel welcome. Ended up shoved into a noisy table by the door, and our server got majorly pissy when asked to keep my food warm while I fed the bambino. He was so rude about it that a woman at a nearby table actually complained. And now I don't really want to go back there, like, ever.

But now that the wonderful Food by Breda Murphy has opened just down the road in Whalley, I'll be hitting that instead when I'm in the Ribble Valley. We had a really good meal there last weekend. My chicken salad had generous pieces of perfectly cooked Goosnargh bird with grapefruit, cashews and an interesting selection of greens and herbs. They also do a mean orange cake.

I was a little worried about our dinner with some visiting family at The Market - I adore the restaurant (above), but wondered how the somewhat fancy place would react to an 8-week old baby. We were treated like royalty - seated at a table in a quiet corner, cheerfully supplied with a pitcher of hot water to warm our bottle and even a cloth so we didn't get our table wet lifting it out. They kept dinner warm without being asked, and were generally lovely about the baby - made us feel like they were glad we had brought her in. They've started opening for Sunday lunch, by the way.

Love Saves the Day has opened a third outpost on Dale Street. It's in that weird, smallish concrete building right next to the Piccadilly Basin car park. It's tiny, but quite nice and stocked with plenty of goodies, a bit more like their Deansgate deli than the minimalist one on Thomas Street (which is soon to get a refit, I hear.)

The long-awaited (okay, at least by me) bagel place in the Arndale Centre has opened. Hilariously, it's called Bagel Nash. Yeah, like Nash Bridges. It's probably too late to tell them the right way to spell nosh. Haven't tried it yet, but they seem to have about a hundred different kinds of bagel sandwich going on.

Oh, and Jay Rayner actually gave a Manchester restaurant a positive review in Sunday's Observer. He really liked The Modern, the new place at Urbis.

Asian Invasion, Part 3: Chaophraya

There's a lot of hype about this new Thai place, Chaophraya. Based on my first visit, it's entirely justified. Of the three places I reviewed for lunch, this was definitely my favourite. It could be one of the best restaurants in the city, though time will tell.

Its location makes it convenient to most of the offices in the city centre, and it seems the word has definitely gotten out. On the Friday lunchtime I was there it was very busy - I think I managed to get the last table in the bar area, most of which were either very high, or way down at floor level. They pad thai and other noodle/rice dishes for under a fiver, and have lunchtime "tapas" selections of skewers, dumplings and various deep-fried bits at £5-£8.

But I had my heart set on Som Tom (£9), a cold salad of shredded green papayas, veggies and prawns. I ate this years ago, in a town near the Cambodian border, prepared by a toothless grandma with a mortar and pestle, and it was unforgettable. God, doesn't that sound like pretentious foodie nonsense? It's true, though. I was visiting my friend China in Surin.

Anyway, I digress. The Som Tom at Chaophraya was very good - shredded veggies and peanuts slathered in just the right amount of sweet-spicy-fishy seasoning, with those little red peppers providing a potent kick. There was a generous serving of grilled tiger prawns alongside, not the little dried shrimps they use for this dish in Thailand (apparently they're very hard to get hold of here.) The service was good, though one waiter did scowl at me when he realised I'd asked for tap water, and he'd just opened a bottle for nothing.

I don't usually spend £9 on lunch, but it'd be well worth the extra dosh for the food alone, even if the atmosphere wasn't impeccably gorgeous. The place is an oasis of burbling fountains, carved statues, and muted lighting - much thought has been put into the decor and it shows. They even have posh hand lotion in the bathroom that smells like orange blossoms.

And you just never know who you'll see in these places. I spent ten minutes staring at this guy a couple tables away from me, trying to remember where I knew him from. Eventually I realised it was Dave Spikey, Chorley's Ambassador of Culture, and felt like a prat.

Chaophraya
Chapel Walks (Above Sam's Chop House)
Off Cross Street
Manchester
M2 1HN
0161 832 8342

Asian Invasion, Part 2: Mai Bai

Sushi sushi sushi, everywhere except Manchester. Until now you could only sample this gift of the Japanese people to mankind in two locations here: The YO! Sushi treadmill in Selfridges and New Samsi on Whitworth Street, both scandalously overpriced and fairly mediocre quality-wise. Recently we got Wing's in the Arndale Foodmarket (reviewed here) and Sapporo Teppanyaki in Castlefield, which I think has the best sushi of the lot.

So here comes another sushi-slinging joint. Mai Bai fills a nice little gap if you're in the vicinity of Albert Square and don't fancy soup or sarnies, it's on Princess Street just across from the Town Hall. Of course, lots of other people have this idea, and on my first visit bang in the middle of workday lunchtime the place was absolutely heaving. Come after 2:15 if you want to eat in peace.

God knows why, but conventional wisdom seems to hold that the English are a tough sell on raw fish. Maybe this is why most sushi places here fill their menus with rolls made with cooked fish, and even weirder things like meat and cream cheese. Mai Bai is no different - cooked rolls easily outnumber raw fish rolls on their menu (chicken teriyaki roll, anyone? Jesus.) This saddens me. To put it plainly, if it ain't raw, it ain't sushi, except for that omlette stuff.

The folks at Mai Bai seem to make most of their sushi beforehand, and sell plastic containers of the stuff in a refrigerated case. I'm told you can ask for things to be made up, even combinations they don't have on the menu, but I wouldn't like to try it when it's busy. I asked for some unagi rolls the second time I was there but they didn't have any eel in. Instead, I got a so-so California roll, which weirdly seemed to have mayonaise in it. The second time I got a very spicy kimchee roll, which was good, but in both cases I'd have preferred more filling and less rice. Both times, some miso soup and hot, in-shell edamame went down a treat. If you go that route, though, you're not going to get out of there for less than £6 or £7 if you want a drink too.

I haven't tried Mai Bai's Japanese-style noodles yet, but am looking forward to it. There were quite a few people busily slurping away both times I visited.

The decor is a little clinical - lots of gleaming metal and white walls, and rows of high stools and counters that make it seem like the kind of place designed for eating in a hurry, or maybe performing elective surgery. But they do have free wi-fi for customers, so you geeks might want to linger. I'll definitely be back for more Mai Bai - it's convenient, reasonably priced, and will satisfy my sushi jones. But more raw fish, please.

Mancubist reminded me to tell you that Manchester Confidential is running an offer where you can get 2-for-1 on hot food there, if you give them your email address (and let their e-marketing elves have their way with it, of course.)

Mai Bai
37 Princess Street
City Centre
Tel:0161 238 9191

Asian Invasion, Part 1: Ning

Coming to Manchester from NYC a few years back, I really missed the huge selection of ethnic restaurants - I was especially homesick for Asian food besides the ubiquitous Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi and straight-ahead Chinese on offer. But lo and behold, Manchester has suddenly gotten a mini-influx of new restaurants serving up other Asian cuisines. And I've been checking them out at lunchtime. Here's a triptych of
sorta-reviews for your consideration:

Part One: Ning

Ning is located at the top of Oldham Street, well past the invisible line where the dodgy discount stores and down-and-out pubs start to outnumber the hair salons and record shops. This isn't exactly a buzzing bit of manc right now, but I'm sure the owners are hoping that the promised transformation of Ancoats into a yuppie breeding ground will bring the punters their way. Could be a smart move, if they can stick it out.

Ning is billed as a "cantine/cafe/restaurant" which seems a little precious - I mean, couldn't ya pick one? It's a small place decorated in a restrained, design-y manner with lots of bare surfaces and big plate glass windows, which some drunken scally will soon careen into and shatter.

The flavour of cooking here is pan asian, heavy on the curries, rice and noodles. While there isn't a ton of choice, the lunch mains are all under £6.50. I had the grilled tiger prawn satay (£5). The satay sauce was nutty and not too sweet; the (too few) prawns were crispy and toothsome, and the rice and raw vegetables alongside just about made this enough for a light lunch.

Across the table, my luncheon companion The Mancubist seemed quite happy with his £5 Ning Curry Lunch (they have a changing selection of curries every week; you pick beef, chicken, veggie or prawn).

Based on that experience, I'd say it's a decent place for lunch if you're in the hood. The food didn't completely knock me out, and I was hoping for more street food and more Vietnamese stuff on the menu ... most of the dishes are Malaysian, which means curry and more curry. But it's a nice addition to Oldham Street.

Ning Cantine Cafe Restaurant
92-94 Oldham St
Manchester, M4 1LJ
0161 238 9088