Drink Archives - Page 4 of 12

Blossoming Perry – ‘the best examples are the match of anything ever fermented’

Hellens, a Tudor manor house outside Much Marcle, has much to offer. One day I plan to take in its annual spring music festival, perhaps mooching around the knot and cloister gardens or the yew labyrinth on this verdant private estate. But most of all it’s their pear trees that top my bucket list. Imagine – in full bloom – an avenue of them, some dating back to 1706, planted to celebrate the coronation of Queen Anne. A stone mill and two large presses survive in the barn. In those days the perry from such saplings was as esteemed as fine wine.

Time has since taken its toll on this Herefordshire heartland (and the neighbouring counties of Gloucesterhire and Worcestershire). Perry sank out of mainstream fashion. Changing agricultural priorities saw orchards and hedgerows ripped out. Now when artisanal fermented pear juice is enjoying a critical resurgence, fireblight threatens to ravage the trees of this unique terroir. There appears to be no protection against this deadly bacteria.

Bittersweet musings then as I neck a bottle of Newton Court Black Mountain Sparkling Perry while I digest Adam Wells’ Perry: A Drinker’s Guide (CAMRA Books £17.99) – a hugely evocative beacon of hope that manages to be more celebration than elegy. It’s a wonderful, revelatory read.

I accompanied it with a digital peek at the Herefordshire Pomona, a 19th century illustrated compendium of apple and pears. Very rare, just 600 copies. Buy one and it might set you back £5,000. So beautiful, though. Alongside small producer standard bearers Oliver’s, Little Pomona, Ross-on-Wye, Gregg’s Pit, Artistraw and Newton Court are all, the true heroes are the trees.

In Adam’s words: “Perry pear varieties grow on trees that can age over 300 years and grow 60ft tall with 50ft canopies, that at their largest hold over a tonne of fruit. Their drink is harder to make, takes more care, than cider—but the best examples are the match of anything ever fermented. You can make it from any pears but most of the best is made from vicious, tannic, acidic, misshapen fruits called ‘perry pears,’ some so inedible that even pigs reject them. Each has a different flavour.”

Here’s a trio of hero trees which typify the fragile survival of the species. Their continuing existence is down to the sheer bloody-mindedness of their discoverers and protectors…

Flakey Bark

Thought to be extinct until Charles Martell (of Stinking Bishop cheese and Gloucester Old Spot pigs fame) happened to spot six trees on the slope of May Hill as he passed by on a horse and cart. These were the only Flakey Barks in existence, over a century old. The revival began. Adam Wells describes the taste of the perry they make as “an earthy, big-boned, hugely tannic bruiser whose flavours and aromas bellow of the land; a textural, visceral medley of petrichor, warm earth, pear skin, dried leaves, lanolin and smokiness, richened by dried pear fruit and peach pits. Try the Flakey Bark single varietal from Ross on Wye Cider & Perry Company.

Gregg’s Pit

That’s the name of one of the stalwart cider and perry makers of Herefordshire, 30 years and counting, with 14 champion Perrymaker trophies under their belt. It’s also the name of the 250 year old ‘mother tree’ of the pear variety of that name. Perry calls their bottled and draught perries “amongst the most pristine, elegant and pure of fruit in the world.”

Coppy

Now here hangs a tale. I first encountered it as a chapter in Dan Saladino’s Eating to Extinction (Jonathan Cape, £25), his exploration of the world’s rarest foods and their importance. I was lucky enough to taste a work in progress sample in the barrel store of Tom Oliver, arguably the most famous cider and perry maker on the planet (and veteran road manager of The Proclaimers). 20 years ago he tracked down the last remaining tree in a remote spot. DNA testing took years but eventually it was conformed as the real deal. The core range at Oliver’s Cider and Perry, near the delightfully bucolic sounding hamlet of Ocle Pychard, is blends, but he makes an exception for the scant amount of Coppy available. It was sharp and sherbety with the promise of great thongs to come. Another of those magical perry moments Wells celebrates.

Alongside Tom Oliver, I was also lucky enough to meet James and Susanna Forbes from Cutting edge Little Pomona and Paul Stephens from Newton Court on a recent visit to Herefordshire. All were amazing folk, passionate about their perry mission. Here’s the Herefordshire travel article I wrote for the Confidentials.

Perry – I put the the big questions to Adam Wells

Adam is a very busy man at the moment. It’s not just the launch of his book, the first definitive guide devoted solely to perry; he has also been shortlisted in the Drink Writer category of the Fortnum and Mason Awards for his work editing Cider Review. Somehow he found time to answer the questions of a serious perry convert.

Why is it important to produce such a comprehensive book on perry at this time?

I think perry has deserved its own dedicated resource for centuries really. It’s an ancient, fascinating, idiosyncratic, unique product and its best examples are the equal of any drink ever fermented. But in the last six years, whilst macro perry and pear cider have nosedived there has been a resurgence of interest in what I call ‘aspirational perry’ – perries of craft and care made with high juice content, with reverence towards orchards and varieties, in a range of exciting styles and in countries and regions all around the world. It’s these perries that the book exists to unpack and champion – and it’s a world that’s difficult to fully explore without insider knowledge. I hope that Perry: A Drinker’s Guide helps make that exploration easier.

After centuries of decline is today a golden age for perry? Or a final flowering of a niche drink?

I think it’s a really special time for perry. Not only in the UK, but all over the world – indeed the UK is arguably just catching up with the international renaissance that perry has seen for a couple of decades now in France, Austria and increasingly the USA. So I’d certainly hope it isn’t a final flowering. There are challenges, sure – they’re outlined in the book and there’s certainly no room for complacency – but almost certainly the best perries that have ever been bottled are sitting on shelves around the world right now. And in my optimistic opinion they’re only going to keep getting better.

From your evocative prose you are deeply in love with everything around pears and perry. As are so many determined small producers. What makes it so special? Compared, say, with higher profile cider. Does it really offer such a breadth of individual styles and why? What should we look out for?

I’m a big subscriber to what Rachel Hendry has brilliantly described as ‘compound drinking’. I worked in the wine industry for eight years, and am now in the spirits industry. Before I wrote a word on cider and perry I’d written about whisky for six years. And my love and understanding of all of those drinks directly feeds into and informs my love of perry – and indeed gives me context for how special and distinct perry is in its own right.

So I don’t know that I’d say that perry is more or less special than any of the other drinks that I love. What I would say is that it is comfortably the most undersung and overlooked of all those drinks. Arguably aspirational cider is itself a niche – and perry has only ever really been written about as almost a subcategory of that niche rather than a beautiful, dazzling thing in its own right, with its own flavours, textures, history, stories, characters, trees, messiness and excitement.

There’s so much that makes it special and unique – my book is hopefully a starting point for a broad and comprehensive celebration of all that. And of course my book merely builds on the work done by makers, campaigners and advocates worldwide for decades before I even knew what perry was.

A breadth of styles and varieties? Well there are over 100 distinct varieties of perry pear in the UK alone, probably even more in France and maybe more again in Central Europe alone, each with their own flavours and characteristics. There are perries at every stop along the sweetness spectrum, sparkling perries made through the pét nat method, the traditional (champagne) method, the charmat (prosecco method). There are fortified perries, there are mistelles – blends of unfermented juice with pear spirit. And, of course, there are simply beautiful still, dry perries. And these are being made by hundreds of producers in dozens of countries globally. So yes, there’s quite a breadth!

Are terroir and vintages important? Can perry improve with age or is it better fresh?

Lots of good questions there! I’d say that the answers to all of them are just the same as in wine. Terroir and vintage are absolutely critical, though producers will look to emphasise them to a greater or lesser extent depending on what they’re looking to achieve – just as in wine. There are blazing hot, super-ripe years like 2018 and 2023 which massively impact flavours, and vintages like 2020 (a personal favourite vintage, if a rather grim year) where phenolic and sugar ripenesses have achieved a beautiful balance.

Terroir has been written about in perry since at least the 5^th century AD, and can be as ultra-granular as a single tree. Since perry comes from a plant – the pear tree – it can of course be impacted by terroir, just as literally every plant, be it barley or grapes or apples or hops is. How much any given producer wants to showcase, that is another matter.

Ageing? It’s like wine again. Some – probably most – perry is best drunk young and fresh, when it’s all about those lovely juicy or zingy primary fruit characteristics, just as most wine is drunk in its youth for the same reason. But pears which have the structural properties to maintain freshness through long ageing – acidity, tannins, complex flavour compounds – can mature beautifully. I recently drank a Ross-on-Wye Flakey Bark 2017 which was as vivid as the day it was bottled. I was lucky enough to try a 2001 Moorcroft from Kevin Minchew in 2022 which was absolutely firing with flavour and far from at the end of its life. And I’ve even had a 1991 Schweizer Wasserbirne – a variety which I absolutely wouldn’t have thought of as a long-ageing candidate – which still had plenty left to give. So very little is known about the potential for maturing perry. But can certain perries age? Absolutely.

Perry’s is obviously a romantic story – from the precarious survival of ancient trees to the personal characteristics of individual pears. But producing it looks fraught with peril from harvesting to pressing. Why is this?

‘Peril’ might be overselling it, but certainly perry is almost uniquely challenging to make. Most of that comes down to the pears themselves. The challenges of harvesting from a 60-foot tall tree are pretty obvious – if the fruit doesn’t splat when it hits the ground you’ve about a tonne’s worth to pick up from the biggest examples, which doesn’t always ripen evenly. There are pears like Yellow Huffcap that refuse to drop their full fruit load and start rotting from the inside out whilst still on the branch. There are varieties like Thorn or Moorcroft which have painfully short ripeness windows – sometimes just 24 hours.

The physical make-up of pears mean they clog presses far more than apples do. Most of them are higher-ph than apples, so they’re more susceptible to bacterial infection. Their tannic structure means you can put them through a filter and they’ll still throw sediment on the other side and you can blend two perfectly clear perries together and end up with milk.

And that probably isn’t the half of it. So absolutely – great perry takes consummate care and attention. Which is all the more reason to celebrate the remarkable fact that it even exists.

2 June 2024/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Wine

On fire! Musu chef Shaw’s smoking take on the Land of the Rising Sun

In the wake of this January’s Noto Peninsula earthquake, which resulted in 245 deaths, I purchased Nancy Singleton Hachisu’s Food Artisans of Japan. Partly because all royalties were pledged to the relief fund (the chapter on Hokoriku: Noto Peninsula is the second largest in the book) and because I had been captivated by a previous book of hers on Japanese preservation traditions, a recent Christmas gift from my brother.

Domiciled in a 90 year-old farmhouse in rural Saitama with her organic farmer husband since 1988, this indomitable Californian has written a string of remarkable books charting Japan’s food culture and championing its artisanal ingredients.

What struck me about Food Artisans was not just the stories of diehard producers sharing their secrets of true miso, shoyu, soba noodles, tofu, air-dried fish, umeboshi, sake, chef’s knives and much more, but the seven chefs she chose to profile. Their straddling of boundaries, sometimes applying modern techniques to age-old traditions, gave the book a contemporary resonance. The backdrop is one of ancient traditions diluted, short cuts taken even in the heartland of Japanese cuisine, yet their new wave artisanship gives hope.

Cut to a muggy May evening on Bridge Street, Manchester as we enter Musu, similar hope in our hearts. Walk 10 minutes in any direction and you’ll be served, for a substantial outlay, takes on sushi and sashimi only a small step up from the supermarket chill cabinet.

Musu is different. The name means “infinite possibilities”. Its kitchen has a kinship with those of Shinobu Namae or Takayoshi Shiozawa – Hachisu heroes not averse to French or Italian influences from our global melting pot.

Mike Shaw is definitely a less exotic sounding chef – you can take the lad out of Saddleworth etc – but he too has outstanding technique that has enable him to combine his classical European technique, forged under the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Raymond Blanc and Richard Neat, with a new-found devotion to Japanese ‘haute cuisine’, inspired by the finest possible raw ingredients. I heartily recommend attending one of the whole bluefin butchery events at the restaurant.

It’s all about such ingredients treated reverentially but with some flexibility. The closest you’ll get to a near authentic Japanese experience at Musu is to book the Omakase. In my review of this for Manchester Confidential. ‘A Dialogue of Discovery’ I describe it as “where connoisseurs of sushi and sashimi go ‘off piste’, leaving their bespoke menu up to a chef they are eyeball to eyeball with across an entire meal. He’ll be a shokunin (master artisan) and you are in his nimble hands as he slivers raw seafood or moulds nigiri in a masterclass of tactile dexterity.”

What I did learn from Omakase and tuna dismemberment was the three core cuts of the bluefin (and allowing none of the rest to go to waste). Akami (lean) chutoro (medium fatty) and otoro (fatty) are the holy trinity.

Two of the cuts, akami and otoro, featured in the new look ‘Land of the Rising Sun by Michael Shaw’ tasting menu for spring – described as “a personal culinary journey through the heart of Japan, where each dish I present is a testament to the inspiration drawn from four distinct cooking styles: Edomae, Izakaya, Teppan and Kaiseki”. Check out the Musu website for full background on that culinary quartet. Inspiration is the word. Shaw is riffing on Japanese food, not just replicating.

You can choose between five, eight and 12 courses. We explored the latter, which costs £150 a head, the wine matches a further £95. Head sommelier Ivan Milchev provided us with small tastes of what goes on that list. Some brilliant matches there. Stand-outs included a red berry-fest of a PetNat from Austria’s Burgenland (partnering a snack of Cornish crab mousse with melon and togarashi), a fragrant and fruity medium-dry Rose d’Anjou surprisingly good with cod cheeks and lardo, a steak-friendly Mencia red from Northern Spain and my favourite. a lighter red Marzemino from the shores of Lake Garda that took on yakitori brilliantly

Among the sashimi it’s good to contrast five day aged hamachi (Japanese amberjack) cured six hours in kombu with Cornish salmon six days aged, cured in salt. Each has its own character – the hamachi sour and slightly fatty in a beguiling way, the salmon less tangy, subtler. A trio of nigiri is delicately enhanced by citrus, lime zest for the sea bream, blood orange and umebushi for the Cornish turbot, while the otoro has a lick of wasabi (the proper stuff)…

Land of the Rising Sun – a journey beyond Japan

The Musu operation is among the slickest in Manchester. Just as there’s no stinting on the quality of raw materials, so the staff are tightly drilled about what they are offering. Still I can’t resist teasing our server about a ‘misfire’ on the pass. One course, of A5 Wagyu. has taken a while coming. Reason? A malfunctioning smoke gun refusing to apply the necessary finish inside the dish’s cloche.

When it arrives the intricately marbled steak is a smoke-tinged, melting delight. Burnt onion cream and crispy kale on brioche gives it an East meets West feel. Ditto with a later combo of 34 day aged beef and Wye valley asparagus with an array of miso caramel, lovage emulsion, whipped miso hollandaise/ bordelaise sauce. It’s a main that’s a long way from Kyoto.

It’s the parade of more intimate dishes that float my boat. A tartare of red carabinero prawn with apple gel and oscietra in a butter dashi; a yakitori of umeboshi-glazed duck meatball; further duck with foie gras in a fried gyoza companied by salsify cooked in sake (and paired with sake); and my habitual Musu go-to, a chawanmushi that follows the Wagyu. This time this foaming savoury custard contains a substantial morel, peas and wild garlic.

To conclude a Yuzu sake of pineapple and mango with a red shiso sorbet is merely a palate cleanser before Shaw’s signature pudding. Guardian critic captured its rare beauty: “A salted white chocolate loveliness that was somewhere between a mousse, a ganache and a panna cotta, and also featured hints of almond and a scattering of something crumbly and sablé-esque.”

Classic European patisserie to end the sunniest of culinary journeys. Sayonara, Chef Shaw.

12 May 2024/by Neil Sowerby

Beer, Travel, Wine

Yakima Valley dreaming! C’mon smell the hops – and the cilantro

Hoppiest days of the year? Definitely harvest time in Yakima, USA. Confession: I’d been pronouncing it ‘Yah-KEE-mah’ all this time, when it should be ‘YACK-i-maw’. Unfamiliar with Yakima? The name does crop up on craft beer cans, the contents of which increasingly rely on its prime product, hops. Oh, and it’s a lovely laid-back place to hang out in – preferably with a beer or two.

Yet it’s not a monoculture this super fertile agricultural valley in Washington State, irrigated by the Yakima River. It abounds in fruit, in particular apples, and its grapes produce some of America’s most thrilling wines, but there’s no escaping the hop in all its varieties – Cascade, Chinook, Centennial and the rest, now globally familiar. Some 75 per cent of US hops are grown hereabouts in ideally suited volcanic soil.

So it seemed a good idea while passing through the region to drop in on the American Hop Museum in the township of Toppenish, whose major claim to fame is the 70 hand-painted murals, of recent origin, evoking its Wild West past. They are more vivid than the museum, which is as dry as last year’s hop pellets. Still this project of local pride, assembling the rusty machinery and fading pictures of yore, sets the scene for the hopfest to come.

Of all the stop-offs on our San Francisco to Seattle road trip this wasn’t the most obviously touristic and yet we found it fascinating from the moment post-museum when we lunched in a pizza place where a dab of Cascade hoppiness joins tomato and mozzarella as the prime toppings, nibbles are called hoppetisers and the merchandise includes hop-branded babygros.

Hop Town Wood Fired Pizza, was our recommended lunch stop. It used to be a street food operation before taking over the folksy tasting room of the former Piety Winery, Donald Wapato Road (there’s now a second branch down the road in Sunnyside).

A house IPA, naturally, accompanied our $12 Porky Pine Prosciutto nine-incher, where pesto, parmesan, pecorino, prosciutto, pine nuts (all the Ps), tomato, hops and a balsamic reduction smothered the charred, springy crust.

We also shared a Hey! Elote!, a spicy corn dip with chicken broth, lime, cholula hot sauce, salty cotija cheese and cilantro (coriander). Testimony to the Hispanic presence in hop country. A third of the population in Yakima, at home in its sunny desert climate, is Hispanic. It’s an area full of tacos trucks and shacks. Locals’ pick? Tacos Los Primos 2 at 404 N 4th St in the city proper. If you’re adventurous go for the tripe filling.

Generations of Mexican hop harvest pickers are celebrated in liquid form by Yakima’s brewing trailblazers Bale Breaker. Each year, cocking a snook at Trump and his Border Wall bigotry, they are a major player in Sesiones del Migrante, a series of beers brewed in collaboration with Mexican and American breweries. Co-founder Meggan Quinn poured us the latest, a Mango IPA that defines ‘tropical’, in the brewery’s garden, sheltered by tall bines, for this is a working hop farm (its 1,000 acres have even even suppled the likes of BrewDog in the UK).

The operation’s roots run deep. Megann’s great-grandparents planted the first nine rows of hops on the family farm back in 1932, a year before the end of Prohibition. Just a decade ago she, her husband and siblings persuaded initially sceptical parents a custom-built brewery on site might just work and it has. The beer are so popular across the Pacific North-West they don’t need to export. Topcutter IPA and Field 41 pale ale are their flagship beers.

What astonished us about one of the world’s premier hop-growing regions was the lack until recently of local breweries tapping into the resource… or speciality beer bars. That’s all changing fast on the back of Bale Breaker’s impetus. One of their brewers, former wildlife biologist Chris Baum, and four buddies set up their own brewing operation, Varietal with the premise of wild yeasts, sours, fruit beers and barrel-ageing – the fun, cutting edge stuff.

Check out the Hop Country Beer Trail or sniff around the taprooms of the Old North Yakima Historic District, where the closure of the Northern Pacific Railroad once hit the town hard. Now, as in so many other similar places, this is where the cool fight back begins. Highly recommended is Single Hill with its attractive taproom and terrace, serving the like of Cerveza blonde ale or or Island Reverie, a benchmark guava and passionfruit sour.

Cider, or what they call hard cider, is a refreshing alternative to beer. The custom-built Tieton Cider Works on the edge of town offers sampling tours. With apples and other fruit sourced from the family’s own organic orchards it’s a clean tasting product, a world away from our own trad scrumpy; we loved the smoked pumpkin cider.

The best restaurant in town is Crafted on North 1st Street. Dan Koommoo is in the kitchen and his wife Mollie front of house. The couple chose Yakima because Mollie’s family is from these parts; Thai-born Dan is a James Beard-nominated Cordon Bleu chef with a glittering cv. Together they have created a casual contemporary dining space, from oysters to cocktails a total delight.

Sunday mornings are for mooching around town. We kicked off with excellent coffee and double fudge brownies at the Essencia Artisan Bakery, a short walk from the historic Capitol Theater. Rebuilt after a fire in 1975, it allegedly hosts the ghost of Shorty McCall, a technician during the 1930s, who hanged himself there after an ill-fated love affair.

Dating back to 1912, the Sports Center – so-called because of a hunting theme not because it’s a place to play basketball – is equally haunted with staff reporting eerie chills and the sound of clinking glassware. All this dates back to the days when it was a brothel with Mafia connections.

Our Downtown Yakima lodging, the Hotel Maison has a more benign but equally striking history. Six storeys high, it was built in 1911 during the boom times by prosperous Freemasons as their club. Crowning glory was the hugely ornate Masonic ceremonial temple on the top floor, designed to replicate the throne room of King Solomon’s Temple. Long mothballed, it has survived the building’s conversion to a hotel,

Elsewhere the comfortable hotel’s decor playfully celebrates its Masonic past and, of course, the pre-eminence of the hop. On our Saturday night there we sipped complimentary Tieton cider and watched the weekly ‘paseo’ of vintage automobiles, all adding to the period charm of the place.

The best place to sample Washington wine Downtown is the Gilbert Cellars, showcasing the family’s wines such as Horse Heaven Hills Cabernet Sauvignon. It saves having to trek out to their vineyard tasting room, but when in wine country it would be wrong not to sample in the wineries, all within easy reach of Yakima town.

I’d recommend the folksy Owen Roe Winery, an organically farmed estate whose reds are particularly impressive, the nearby Treveri Cellars, (tours for $50) sparkling wine specialists run by a German winemaker, whose top bottles have been served at White House receptions.

Still the hop remains king hereabouts. A quintessential time to visit Yakima (fly into Seattle two and a half hours’ drive away) is autumn when the valley hosts its annual Fresh Hop Festival. This year’s date is October 5. A unique array of beers made with newly harvested ‘green’ hops showcases the individual character of each variety. Now that’s not to be sniffed at!

10 May 2024/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Wine

Tom and Laurissa’s Pignut – sustainable restaurant that prides itself on going to ground

Bank holiday weekend and I’m motoring towards Scarborough. Mist wreathes Sutton Bank as I tackle the hairpin ascent. In drizzly Helmsley the tea rooms are doing a roaring trade and I’m consigned to the overspill long stay. This is journey’s end. No seaside scrum for me. A five minute walk across the Market Square, Pignut awaits.

Context here. This forage-centric restaurant is named after conopodium majus, a commoner than you’d imagine umbellifer, its delicate fronds confirming it’s a wild cousin to the carrot. Uproot it in spring and there’s the tiny edible tuber. Pigs love to guzzle it, hence the name. Alternative monikers include hog nut, earth nut and kipper nut. Trim off the outer skin and taste. Hazelnut? Definitely a hint of sweet chestnut apparently. Need to know more? Check out this video report from the pignut front line.

Inside the eponymous restaurant I am not confronted by this forest gift, but there will prove to be a preponderance of late season wild garlic across the £95 eight course tasting menu I have chosen. Also figuring: sweet cicely, cow parsley and hogweed. All demonstrate the ethos behind this debut project from chef Tom Heywood and sommelier partner Laurissa Cook. Rows of ferments, pickles and oils are the sustainable bedrock of an operation rooted in the terroir. Ditto the commitment to local suppliers, proudly listed. This access to amazing raw materials played a big part in why the couple decamped from York, where they worked together at the now departed Rattle Owl.

As it nears its first birthday I’m surprised how under the radar Pignut has been despite early Michelin recognition. Not quite on the level of Mýse eight miles to the south in Hovingham, which has been fast-tracked to an actual star inside its first year of opening. But then its chef/patron and fellow York escapee Josh Overington has a high national profile from his Cochon Aveugle tenure.

What both restaurants share, apart from open kitchens and stylishly stripped down interiors (Pignut has just six tables plus a cosy upstairs lounge), is a significant attention to their wine list. In Mýse’s case it is curated by Keeling & Andrew, the Noble Rot duo; Pignut’s is more eclectic, making the £65 seven 100ml glass wine pairing an act of global serendipity. Laurissa kindly let me have a truncated version since I had to drive home later via switchback Sutton Bank again, then the A1(M) and M62. I missed out on a Pedro Ximenez collab between Envínate and Bodegas Alvear in Montilla, a Polish Cabernet Sauvignon and, ‘local’ incarnate, Jacky Boy, an imperial stout from Helmsley Brewery 60 metres away. I’m sure the latter would have been perfect with course four, the house soda bread with whipped Fountains Gold Cheddar butter. The matches I did try (of each more soon) all worked brilliantly with Laurissa a font of information at my shoulder.

So what were the stand-out dishes – and wines – of this leisurely lunch?

After snacks built around wastage from other courses (think asparagus peelings in the chicken broth, lamb belly, heart and liver in a mini-faggot) came an exquisite salt-aged beef tartare given crunch by a soda bread crumb, accompanied by a chilled blend of Piemontese grape trio Dolcetto, Barbera and Nebbiolo – from Geyserville in California.

To cope with the Goan spiced, Hodgson’s Crab, another wine at the natural end of the spectrum, a tropical Gewürztraminer from Slovakia. This went even better with a further sourcing from Hartlepool fishmonger Hodgson, which supplies over 20 Michelin star restaurants. This was a pearly tranche of wild brill which Tom had stuffed with a duxelle. After steaming it arrived topped with a smoked mussel under a torched lettuce leaf in an intense mussel and chive broth.

If that was subtle craftsmanship the final dish, a Moorside mushroom mousse, was the bravado barnstormer. Sourced from Luke Joseph at nearby Fadmoor, oyster mushroom and lion’s mane are made into a parfait that is then glazed with dark chocolate, topped with a coffee tuile and served with a mushroom ice cream. What could match this earthy pudding adventure? I succumbed to the recommended Alcyone, an aromatised Tannat red from Uruguay, the bottle adorned with an image of that goddess of the sea, moon and tranquillity. Apparently the base wine was aged for several years in French oak and suffused with various herbs. Hints of chocolate, vanilla and mint reminded me of a Barolo chinato, a dessert wine with a similar savoury edge. A very clever match.

This dizzying climax to the tasting menu ‘encouraged’ me to enjoy a prolonged, post-prandial mooch around pretty, pantiled Helmsley, including its Walled Garden in the shadow of the ruined castle. Its community-focused five acres dedicated to horticultural therapy also supply herbs and flowers to Pignut. Naturally. I hope all this kind of involvement earns them a place in the Good Food Guide’s 100 Best Local Restaurants, currently being assembled. A front-runner is Bavette near Leeds (review here), which makes up my trio of favourite new northern restaurant openings over the past 12 months.

Pignut’s menus alone, artfully adapting to the seasons, make them well worthy of inclusion. And back to that wine offering. I made my glass of Canadian Cabernet Franc stretch to include the Thornton-le Dale lamb course (maybe a heavy hand with shawarma spicing here) and Angus beef fillet from the Castle Howard estate with beef-fat baked asparagus and a pesto of wild garlic that felt relatively conventional.

My one regret from the visit? Perhaps I should have splashed out on an extra glass – of Belgian Chardonnay. No, me neither. But I foolishly balked at £16 for a 175cl glass. After it aroused my curiosity on arrival attentive Laurissa had poured me a generous taster. Could easily be mistaken for a top-end Macon. When I return to this charming spot, as inevitably I shall, staying overnight in the town, I may well order a bottle of the same. Maybe pignuts will be on the menu.

Pignut, 12 Bridge St, Helmsley, York YO62 5DX. Eight course tasting menu £95 (wine pairing £65), four courses £55 (£30).

6 May 2024/by Neil Sowerby

Beer

Historic Brewing Conference, Mcr – cheers to August’s unmissable mash-up

Standing your round goes back to ancient times. Beer was big in Ancient Mesopotamia. Who would have thought it? Witness the clay tablet above, dating back to 3,000 BC. Unearthed in what is now modern Iraq, it is in the custody of the British Museum. The cuneiform script details the allocation of a brew as payment to workers. Almost in the realm of Indiana Jones, this intoxicating breath of ale’s ancestry.

This August’s Historic Brewing Conference in Manchester delves no further back than 2,000 years later – when the Iron Age transformed Europe and our shores. There’s still a lot to get through. Among a distinguished line-up of beer historians from across the globe will be Johnny Horn, co-founder of Scottish sour specialists Vault City, currently brewing at his new Holy Goat project in Dundee. His previous academic speciality was the archaeology of Iron Age Britain and he has published papers on drinking vessels of the period. So expect his talk on Beer and Brewing in Pre-historic Britain to be one of the highlights of the two day conference (August 5 and 6).

The venue is the new incarnation of Fairfield Social Club, appropriately in one of the city’s most historic districts, between the River Irk and Angel Meadow. And handily close to Blackjack Brewery. The creators of this unique event, exploring both the technical and social aspects of beer’s history, are Keith Sowerby, one of the North’s most informed beer enthusiasts, and Steve Dunkley, formerly of Beer Nouveau, specialists in reviving old styles.

Keith tells me: “The project is six years in the making and was gaining traction when the Pandemic struck. We had aimed to hold the conference in the old Fairfield Social Club railway arch, so there is some irony in our finding that their new set-up meets our needs so well.

“We have noted events which have touched on historic brewing before, especially in the States, but none aiming to systematically address the breadth of both the technical and social aspects of brewing ales, beers and other cereal based beverages, linking in forum and individual discussion over a few beers to our modern experience. We are guaranteeing that this will not be a dry event.”

Keith and Steve have lined up a sparkling array of speakers, including MC Emma Inch, a writer and home brew champion whose most recent podcast, Same Again?, explores the complex relationships between beer, pubs and mental health; four times Beer Writer of the Year and social historian Pete Brown; Jane Peyton, beer educator and Britain’s first beer sommelier of the year; and Mancunian ‘exile’ John Keeling, legendary head brewer at Fuller’s for decades.

From Norway comes farmhouse beer styles expert Lars Marius Garshol; from Minneapolis Doug Hoverson, chronicler of mid-West brewing; and from Toronto Gary Gillman, whose blog explores the technical aspects of brewing history. My wild card across the two days is the presentation from Irish historian Dr Christina Wade on Going to Hell in a Beer Barrel: Alewives, Demons, and the History that Connects them.

If all this sounds a mite lecture room, fear not. This is a beer-led event. So much fun to be had. Alongside the papers there will be ample windows for socialising and networking. A special conference bar will be well stocked with recreations of historic and heritage beer styles. Expect some collaborations with local breweries (to be announced). And if one of the talks does tackle Prohibition we can’t see that having any tangible effect on intake.

Tickets are on sale now, priced at £70, giving access to both days, Monday, August 5 and Tuesday, August 6. Quite a bargain. Buy them here.

19 March 2024/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Wine

The North strikes back – Bavette, Lamb of Tartary and Eight at Gazegill

I’ve been taking flak for concentrating too much on reviewing new restaurants in London. In redressing the balance I have broken an unwritten rule – never go in too early. Let the paint dry, the initial glitches get fixed. Apologies then for my haste to this Northern trio – Bavette, neighbourhood bistro in Horsforth near Leeds, ‘veteran’, open all of three weeks; The Lamb of Tartary dining pub in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, just a handful of days in; and Eight at Gazegill, organic farm restaurant in the lee of Pendle Hill, that officially opened only this weekend gone. Each brings something special to their respective patch, each is helmed by a chef with an inspiring cv, each is bravely tackling the harsher hospitality environment outside the capital.

Bavette – echoes of the legendary Racine

I’ll start in this same order with Bavette, which has hit the ground running. The top end of Town Street in Horsforth has more than its share of ‘To Let’ signs; down towards The Green business looks healthier. Nowhere, though, has near the élan of this bistro arriviste, set up by a Leeds lad, back from London success, and his French husband. Sandy Jarvis is the chef and Clèment Cousin, front of house and sommelier. Their is a smart fit-out with the open kitchen set well back.

What takes my eye is the bookshelves that divide the space. I like a chef who wears his influences on his sleeve (or rather dust jacket). There is Le Pigeon, a cookbook celebrating chef Gabriel Rucker’s Portland Oregon take on classic French food. To prove it can be done well beyond La Belle Patrie, though a dinner I had there on a 2017 West Coast road trip didn’t live up to the recipes I’d cooked from at home. A large illustrated tome devoted to Pâté en Croûte nudges me into believing the Gallic torch might burn brighter this blustery lunchtime a 20 minute bus ride from Leeds centre.

So, of course, I ordered the Venison and Pork Pâté en Croûte (£12.50) along with another quintessentially French starter, a Seafood Bisque (£11). The former was a juicy morass of tangled meat flakes in a taut pastry casing, the icing on the croûte a savoury Earl Grey jelly; the latter came with a pimento-spiked rouille and dinky croutons and was a deep dip into pure poissonnerie. Earlier, nibbles had been a quartet of croquettes (£6) oozing with molten Comté. My accompanying glass of white, like much of the list, comes from natural specialists, Wayward Wines of Chapel Allerton, so the crisp 100% Saugvignon Mikaël Bouges La Pemte de Chavigny was an old friend. Clèment Cousin’s family are iconic minimum intervention winemakersin the Loire and there’s a sub-section of half a dozen ‘family specials’ bottles.

The Bavette partners met while working at Covent Garden’s groundbreaking Terroirs natural wine bar, now closed. Sandy’s route there was not typical of the hospitality trade. After studying chemistry at university in Manchester he enrolled at Leith’s cookery school in London, where he was inspire by a guest speaker, also a personal hero of mine – Henry Harris of Racine. With his cooking diploma but no cv to speak of, he persuaded Harris to take him on at the Knightsbridge bistro that was more authentique than most such establishments across La Manche. It’s a decade since the original Racine shut, less than a year since Harris joyously revived it as Bouchon Racine above a Farringdon pub. When I, unaware of the past link, tell Sandy, now 39, it was the best of its kind since my Bouchon blow-out in May he is more than delighted. You sense, after carving out an impressive London career (Brawn, Culpepper), this a dream realised of doing the French bistro food he likes best in a place of his own.

Catching up on my research later, I discover a pork chop would be his desert island main. Arguably mine too now after sampling his Pork Chop à la Grenobloise (£20) – a pretty fan of sweet fatted tenderness, dressed with capers, parsley and lemon, accompanied by a potato puree as smooth as Joël Robuchon’s classic version. I feel almost a traitor to veer off to a a glass of Italian red. Crucella is from the Campania, a blend of Merlot, Freisa and Sangiovese offering soft tannins and a beguiling lick of liquorice.

The mains choices inevitably also feature a bavette steak with shallots and, a source of next table plate envy, sea bream with a vin jaune sauce, buttered leeks and fondant potato. Among the puddings is another Sandy desert island must – a Paris-Brest, created in 1910 to honour a bike race between the French capital and the Breton port. It is designed to resemble a bike wheel, with its ring of pâte à choux, or cream puff dough, split horizontally and filled with a praline mousseline. So French. Maybe next time. I have no regrets about finishing with a with old stager crème brûlée with Yorkshire rhubarb. My digestif? A quince liqueur from the Gaillac region. Santé, Bavette.

The Lamb of Tartary – legend in the past, maybe in the making

I love heavy curtains over an entrance. Historically they were to keep out off-street draughts. As at the aforementioned Racine. They are in situ too at The Edinburgh Castle, which has this year debuted in the Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs list at no.24 under the stewardship of Shaun Moffat (ex-Manteca, Berber & Q in London), who has just scooped Chef of the Year at the Manchester Food and Drink Festival. Now some spectacular drapes garland the way into what was Castle stablemate Cottonopolis, re-invented as The Lamb of Tartary. Exec chef Shaun has been charged with putting his own food stamp in place of a tired formula of NQ bar with bee motifs, Czech tank beer and Asian-inspired dishes.

Already it looks jazzier, the fabric wow mirrored in the booth furnishings in what is otherwise quite a pastelly re-furb. When I test the all-day food offering very early on it definitely shares much of the Edinburgh Castle nose-to-tail, respond-to what’s-on-the market ethos Shaun made much of in a down to earth 2022 interview with me. The dishes bely the poncy pub moniker, which namechecks the legend of a lamb that manages to be both a true animal and a living plant. Vegans look away now. The belief was that cotton plant Agnus scythicus of Central Asia fed sheep that grazed around it via a kind of umbilical cord. When all accessible foliage was gone, both plant and sheep died.

So, yes, I do order the Texel cross lamb saddle chop, sourced not from Tartary but near Knutsford. Costing £32, it’s part of the grill menu. Ideally I’d have preferred the lamb fat crisper but that’s a minor cavil. A pubbier use of the lamb is in a Scotch egg but, early days, that isn’t quite ready for the pass on our visit. A surprising triumph from the grill is fleshy salt-baked celeriac (£15). Glorious. From Pollybell Farm for all you source nerds, it is served with Polyspore mushrooms and bitter leaves. And naturally I add a side of triple-cooked chips because a Shaun’s kitchen does them so well.

The rest of our lunch consists of small plates that seem well placed as superior drinks ballast, for the aim is for an all-day dining pub – in contrast with so many ‘gastropubs’ that are clearly restaurants in disguise. There’s proper, funky brown crab meat in a crumpet for £8, a Belted Galloway steak tartare (£12) that comes with quality potato crisps, home-cured sea trout in a heady caper mayo with Pollen sourdough (£12) plus another impressive veggie plate, plunging purple sprouting and burrata into a chlorophyll rich sauce (£9). And to start it all off there had been Achill oysters from Ireland given Shaun;s trademark rhubarb mignonette dressing (main image).

Puddings were still a work in progress they weren’t even on a printed menu. There’s a dense concoction of chocolate and cherries and a quieter pannacotta, smothered in forced rhubarb compote that I marginally preferred. As at The Edinburgh Castle the wine list is well priced but not very adventurous and there are couple of cask pumps (go for the Buxton Brewery). Would I pop in for a casual beer. Probably not, with Pelican Bar across the road and Port Street a two minute walk. For food? I can’t wait to return.

Eight at Gazegill – I remember when this was all fields…

Well it still is, almost. I’m cheating here. Canapes and Bolney fizz at a aunch party can’t generate a review, but I’m so keen to plug this daring, remote eco venture I’ve already previewed towards the end of its seven gestation. It is on an award-winning organic farm with zero miles access to all their livestock and produce. Ian O’Reilly and Emma Robinson are custodians of 250 acres of unspoiled farmland, with hay meadows and more than 50 species of wild flower and herbs, that has been in her family for 500 years. Last year Gazegill won Countryside Alliance Rural Oscar for Best ‘Local’ Food & Drink Retailer in the UK. Now the next step.

The new, ultra-sustainable restaurant building wouldn’t look out of place in a vineyard in the Napa Valley, but this is the Ribble Valley. The plan is for Eight to join all those other places that have turned it into a major foodie destination. To make their intentions clear they have hired Doug Crampton, who learnt his craft at the legendary Anthony’s in his native Leeds and ran James Martin’s Manchester restaurant for nearly a decade.

It’s called Eight because it’s an octagonal, 100-cover oak structure with large Pendle-ready picture windows, the whole space powered using stored solar energy generated on-site by a wind turbine and solar voltaics. The open kitchen boasts a wood-fired oven, central both to a casual daytime dining operation and to tasting menus Fridays and Saturday evenings. Spring arriving, the outside terrace can host a further 60 folk.

The evening we arrive for the launch it is very un-springlike but the welcome is warm and generous. A harbinger of good times ahead came in the shape of a simple chipolata. Made with Gazegill’s own nitrite-free organic pork, it is flavoured with wild garlic from the fields we are looking across at. The farm employs its own regular forager. The glaze on this delicious bite is made with honey from their own bees.

Suburbs, cutting edge city quarter, unspoilt countryside… the seeds of some great northern eating places have been sown.

15 March 2024/by Neil Sowerby

Beer, Food, Restaurants

My favourite new restaurant in London? Donia – a Filipino fantasia

Last summer I wrote a love letter to Soho, reflecting both the louche legend and its current crisis of identity. During that June visit I lingered over lunch or dinner at the likes of Quo Vadis, Mountain, Noble Rot and 64 Goodge Street (in adjacent Fitzrovia). Enough said. And all within easy reach of my habitual Soho base camp, the Z Hotel at the end of raucous Old Compton Street.

A recent return was similarly gastronomically reassuring with forays to old fave Kiln and newcomers The Portrait by Richard Corriga n, the all-conquering Devonshire gastropub and Filipino standard bearer Donia, my most exciting destination of the year so far.

A further spice hit was tagged on with an expedition to champion of the Sri Lankan diaspora, Rambutan, out at Borough Market. There was a tentative Soho connection even here; the plan had been to investigate neighbouring Camille, from the same small plates and natural wine stable as laid-back Ducksoup in Dean Street. But, once down by London Bridge, I couldn’t resist the Tamil-influenced treats of chef patron Cynthia Shanmugalingam, who I‘ve written about before she opened up on Stoney Street a year ago.

But back to my Soho jaunt… and a Sunday evening just off Carnaby Street. Kingly Court at first glance is just an atrium of bland offerings, but the Top Floor has been the spawning ground for some laudable food – Indian served up by the all women brigade of Asma Khan’s Darjeeling Express and the cuisine in exile of Imad’s Syrian Kitchen. Now they are joined by Donia, open for just 10 weeks.

It is an ambitious offshoot of a London-based Filipino food group, defined previously by their bakery and ice cream specialities. I really can’t gauge the ‘authenticity’ of the Donia menu. My conception of Filipino food is of a melting pot of south-east Asian, Chinese and Spanish culinary influences; my only real experience a street food tub of national dish adobo, a stew featuring marinated meat and vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, black pepper and bay leaves.

This is on a thrillingly different level. Maybe I did over-order, Blame it on the covert grande dame of food reviewers, Marina O’Loughlin, whose adulatory Instagram post first alerted me to Donia’s delights. She described the lobster ginataan as “so sweet and rich with coconut milk we basically had it for dessert.” After that I couldn’t resist. As a solo diner I restrained myself to just the half-crustacean (still £42), after which I hug on in in for the real signature pudding. The ube choux (£12) is a crunchy craquelin pastry with coconut chantilly and an initially off-putting cream made from purple sweet potato. Be brave. It might be a contender for London’s best dessert de jour.

Then again the large house pie (£27, main image), made for sharing really (heroically I had to go it alone), is also a triumph. Traditionally caldereta is a Filipino goat meat and liver spread stew. Donia’s version encased in pithivier-style pastry is altogether more refined, but both the lamb shoulder filling and the stew ‘jus’ pack a chilli kick.

Offal is very much a Filipino thing. The meal gets off to a blazing start with a £3.50 chicken heart skewer, six smoky nuggets perched on an adobo sauce. The dish that follows is a more elaborate culinary statement. Brown butter lime sauce is the base, on top lashings of roseate white crab mayo and a crumb crowning a trio of prawn and pork wontons. £15 and worth every penny.

I enjoyed a glass of my favourite French rose, Triennes, with this hugely impressive procession, but I’d suggest cocktails are the way to go in this joyous, simple dining room, First a palate cleansing ‘Pipino’ (£12, cucumber, sesame, gin, lime, coconut), then a ‘Plum’ (for a quid more a potent Negroni where mezcal replaces the gin and the Japanese plum wine umeshu supplements the vermouth).

Denman Street is just a five minute walk away from Kingly Court. En route, you’ll find my Soho ‘local’, The Lyric. I couldn’t resist a pint of the regular Harvey’s Sussex Bitter. That stalwart real ale pub was heaving but tumbleweed compared with much hyped newcomer The Devonshire, which is shifting Guinness at, well, a Guinness Book of Records level. Co-founder Oisin Rogers is from Dublin and particularly proud of his keeping of the black stuff. He’s convinced the punters. They were six deep outside a rammed downstairs bar.

Upstairs across two floors of dining rooms is where the food action is with tables being snapped up a month ahead. First floor is home to the Grill, furnace-like pumping out the heat. No charcoal used; it’s all embers of kiln-dried oak, I’m told as I gingerly inspect the operation and feel for the rosy-faced team loading beef steaks from their own ageing room and iberico pork from equally impeccable sources. It all looked amazing and so I regretted having already ordered beef cheek and Guinness suet pudding for my main (check out that encounter here).

I dined in the top floor Claret Rooms, as atmospheric as if Dr Johnson or that hyperactive Mr Dickens were expected imminently. Solo, resisting an inviting wine list, I stuck with a couple of pints of Guinness. The stout was particularly suited to accompany a crab salad that spoke of the team’s commitment to the freshest of produce served simply. So worth all the hype? Positive vibes, but perhaps It needs to settle into its skin perhaps.

Oisin’s compatriot, Richard Corrigan, is a chef/restaurateur long settled into his own skin and his latest venture puts to bed the old stereotype: you’ll never handsomely dine in a major public museum or gallery.

The Portrait is pretty as a picture (sic), on the top floor of the magnificently refurbished and recently re-opened National Portrait Gallery, just above Trafalgar Square. The rooftop views from the dining room are spectacular, but would that also be the case with the £39 set lunch? Fear not, it may be a definite downsizing from the a la carte but it is a canny offering matched by a consummately smooth service. Corrigan is class. Each ingredient speaking for itself. A slice of romaine lettuce on a slick of romesco, wrapped in pale, subtle Bayonne ham, then conchigliette pasta with rosemary infused braised rabbit and a flurry of pecorino, blood orange sorbet with the fruit both softly sliced and and stiffly confited.

Kiln, in Soho proper, is a far different beast, its gap year inspiration some uncompromising food shack in North East Thailand. Primitive fire and smoke applied to almost feral ingredients in clay pots and iron woks as you sit mesmerised at the walk-in counter, it was a game changer when it arrived in Brewer Street back in 2016.

The formula remains the same. With an hour to spare mid-afternoon I revisited old favourites – raw mutton laap (£12.50) and clay pot based glass noodles (£7.85). The hand-chopped laap, a kind of Northern Thai tartare, is spiced with makhwaen, garlic, star anise, coriander seed and dried chillies and served in cups of radicchio.

The glass noodles are simmered with slivers of rare breed Tamworth pork belly and brown crab, both UK sourced, with the boost of pungent fish sauce and soy. After which, yes, I did require a further Harvey’s quencher at The Lyric. So easy to become a Soho flaneur.

Harvey’s is also a fixture in another fine old London boozer, the Market Porter, cheek by jowl with Borough Market. It’s my usual refuge from the multitudes swamping this foodie magnet.

On this occasion I walked past 50 metres to the very different Rambutan. Set across two floors, it is a casual, almost canteen-like dining space specialising in the cuisine of northern Sri Lanka, though the first dish I order, a green mango and yoghurt pachadi (£6.70) is the kind of raita you’d also find across the water in Kerala. It is a cooling antidote to a red northern prawn curry (£17.40), dense with tamarind, that ratchets up the scoville count (to nowhere near Kiln levels) after a subtler starter of gundu dosa (three for ££5.30).

These are nothing like the now ubiquitous dosas of India (or Drummond Street next to Euston Station), similarly made from fermented rice-lentil batter but more akin to mini doughnuts. You bite through the crisp exterior and encounter a soft texture spiced with chilli and mustard seed. Extra oomph comes when you dip them in a jungle-green chilli and coriander chutney. Rice and a flakey, paratha-like roti completed the good value lunch order. And so back to my Soho manor.

Factfile

Donia Restaurant, 2.14, Top Floor, Kingly Ct, Carnaby St, Carnaby, London W1B 5PW.

The Devonshir e, 17 Denman St, London W1D 7H.

The Portrait by Richard Corrigan, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE.

Kiln, 58 Brewer St, London W1F 9TL.

Rambutan, 10 Stoney St, London SE1 9AD.

• I paid for my meals at all five restaurants with Donia kindly on the night offering me a ‘friends and family’ discount.

I stayed at Z Hotels Soho, 17 Moor Street, London W1D 5AP. This is a bargain lodging for somewhere so central and handy; it’s best to book well in advance. Claustrophobes take note: some of the rooms lack a window. Pay a bit more and land lucky, like I did this time, and you get a wizard view over Cambridge Circus and the the Palace Theatre, currently hosting Harry Potter & The Cursed Child. The Z Hotels group have 10 further hotels in London and three others – in Bath, Liverpool and Glasgow.

5 March 2024/by Neil Sowerby

Beer, Food, Restaurants

A night of celebration – and campaigning – as MFDF Awards are handed out

I’ve lost count of the number of Manchester Food and Drink Awards gala dinners I’ve attended, but this celebration of the region’s hospitality industry remains joyously upbeat despite the perils that still threaten to torpedo so many independent operators.

The Awards themselves had been pushed back from their usual October slot when the mothership Festival foundered. Hopefully, it will return in 2024. Meanwhile these 2023 Awards flew the flag in a fresh venue that really worked – New Century Hall – and opened with a defiant political edge.

In person on stage Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. En route to Depeche Mode at the nearby Arena, he rallied the 350 hospitality troops gathered for the occasion. On film Sacha Lord, his night-time economy adviser (I reserve ‘czar’ for Russian potentates), and a clutch of North West chefs demanded the Government slash VAT on the industry back down to 10 per cent. Lord kicks off the challenging This is an Emergency video chillingly: “I know people staring at the cliff edge.”

After the dinner sourced from traders in the New Century Kitchen, down to the main business of the night. The 18 award winners announced reflected the city’s current high global profile.

Last week the The Edinburgh Castle in Ancoats debuted in 24th place in the Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs; now its kitchen dynamo Shaun Moffat followed up by scooping Chef of the Year. A huge double also for Higher Ground. On the same day they won a Michelin Bib Gourmand they were named MFDF Newcomer of the Year. They are also in the frame for the national Best New Restaurant at the Good Food Guide Awards 2024. I was also delighted that Ancoats small plates and natural wine stalwart Erst finally won Best Restaurant.

Across the evening there was strong recognition for Manchester’s unrivalled craft beer scene. Track won best independent drinks producer, the Marble Arch best beer bar/pub, Bundobust best plant-based offering for the Gujarati-inspired small plates that accompany the beers it brews in town and James Campbell received the Outstanding Achievement Award for two decades as the driving force behind cutting edge breweries Marble, Cloudwater and, currently, Sureshot.

Sign of the difficult times, one of the nominees for best drinks producer, Squawk Brewery, has just been forced to close. So high jinks celebrating an amazing food and drink scene tinged with sadness at the steady drip of closures. Time to make a stand on that crucial VAT drop issue. Watch the Sacha Lord film, also featuring the likes of Simon Wood, Michael Clay, Mary Ellen McTague and and emotional Simon Rimmer, who was forced to close his flaship restaurant Greens recently, and sign the associated petition.

All the fantastic winners at Manchester Food and Drink Awards 2023

Here is this year’s awards list in full (for addresses visit this link)…

Restaurant of the Year – Erst

Shortlisted: Higher Ground, Climat, Another Hand, 10 Tib Lane

OSMA, The Spärrows. mana, Erst.202

Chef of the Year – Shaun Moffat (Edinburgh Castle)

Shortlisted: Joseph Otway (Higher Ground), Danielle Heron (OSMA), Luke Richardson (Climat), Julian Pizer (Another Hand), Patrick Withington (Erst), Seri Nam (Flawd Wine), Mike Shaw (MUSU), Shaun Moffat (Edinburgh Castle)

Newcomer of the Year – Higher Ground

Shortlisted: Climat, Restaurant Örme, Fold Bistro & Bottle Shop, The Jane Eyre Chorlton, Madre, New Century Kitchen, Stretford Canteen, Higher Ground

Plant-based Offering of the Year– Bundobust

Shortlisted: Lily’s Indian Vegetarian Cuisine, Bahn Ví, The Walled Gardens, Maray, Speak in Code, Flawd Wine, The Mekong Cat, Bundobust.

Takeaway of the Year – Burgerism

Ad Maoira, Unagi Street Food & Sushi, Ciaooo Garlic Bread, Fat Pat’s, Wright’s Fish and Chips. Maida Grill House, Al Madina, Burgerism.

Independent Drinks Producer of the Year – Track

Shortlisted: Sureshot Brewing, Stockport Gin, Cloudwater Brew Co, Tarsier Spirit, Pod Pea Vodka, Manchester Union Brewery, Squawk Brewing Co, Track.

Independent Food Producer of the Year – Pollen Bakery

Shortlisted: Cotton Field Wharf, Great North Pie Co, La Chouquette, Gooey, Yellowhammer, The Manchester Smoke House, The Flat Baker, Companio Bakery, Pollen.

Foodie Neighbourhood of the Year – Stockport

Shortlisted: Levenshulme, Altrincham, Urmston, Prestwich, Monton, Sale, Stretford, Stockport.

Coffee Shop of the Year – Grapefruit Coffee

Shortlisted: Cafe Sanjuan, Another Heart to Feed, Idle Hands, Bold Street Coffee, Smoak, Ancoats Coffee Co, Siop Shop, Grapefruit.

Food Trader of the Year – Fat Pat’s

Shortlisted: Baratxuri, Chaat Cart, Triple B, Tawny Stores, Yellowhammer, Little Sri Lankan, Pico’s Tacos, Oh Mei Dumplings, Fat Pat’s.

Affordable Eats Venue of the Year – Ornella’s Kitchen

Shortlisted: Nila’s Burmese Kitchen, Great North Pie Co, Cafe Sanjuan, Noodle Alley, Tokyo Ramen, Lily’s Deli, House of Habesha, Ornella’s Kitchen.

Food and Drink Retailer of the Year – Cork of the North

Shortlisted: Ad Hoc Wines, Out of the Blue Fishmongers, Littlewoods Butchers, Wandering Palate, New Market Dairy, Petit Paris Deli, La Chouquette.

Pop up or Project of the Year – Platt Fields Market Garden

Shortlisted: Our Place, Tawny Stores at Yellowhammer, SAMPA, Little Sri Lankan, Suppher, Fare Share, Micky’s, Platt Fields Market Garden

Pub or Beer Bar of the Year – The Marble Arch

Shortlisted: Track Brewery Taproom, The City Arms, Runaway Brewery Taproom, Fox & Pine, Reddish Ale, Station Hop, Heaton Hops, The Marble Arch.

Bar of the Year – Schofield’s Bar

Shortlisted: The Jane Eyre Ancoats, Blinker, Red Light, Sterling Bar, Hawksmoor, 10 Tib Lane, Flawd Wine, Schofield’s Bar.

Neighbourhood Venue of the Year – Stretford Canteen

Shortlisted: Restaurant Örme, OSMA, Ornella’s Kitchen, The Oystercatcher, Yellowhammer, Fold Bistro & Bottle Shop, The Jane Eyre Chorlton, Stretford Canteen.

Great Service Award – Hawksmoor

Shortlisted: Higher Ground, Schofield’s Bar, Where The Light Gets In, Climat, Wood Manchester, Sterling Bar, Tast Catala, Hawksmoor.

The Howard and Ruth Award for Outstanding Achievement – James Campbell

Recognising people who have contributed something outstanding to the hospitality industry in Greater Manchester.

30 January 2024/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Wine

Mythical feasts of Mykonos as Fenix lands by the ‘wine dark’ Irwell

Remember Fleet Foxes, Seattle-based purveyors of glorious indie folk harmonies? Eventually they broke up… like the waves against the pine-fringed shores of Mykonos. The Greek island gave its name to one enigmatic b-side, offering “a vision of a gentle coast/and a sun to maybe dissipate/shadows of the mess you made”.

Its echoes oddly haunt a shimmering Mykonos-influenced lunch in the very different surroundings of on-the-up, post-industrial Manchester. The ‘wine dark’ Irwell flows nearby with Factory International aka Aviva Studios on its banks, making its eye-wateringly expensive cultural statement. Soho House, come spring, is set to provide a playground for the well-heeled colonisers of the former Granadaland. Shall we all sport something Chanel for the opening?

Shiny new £7m Fenix is, of course, feeding off this vibe. If you thought, Tattu, debut restaurant of brothers Adam and Drew Jones, sprinkled gold dust on the dining scene, this new project is pure platinum – a dreamy homage to the destination that has become the ‘Cycladean Ibiza’. Curvy, sea cave surfaces, an ‘olive tree’ naturally and lighting that glows like an Aegean sunset. The bar is dark and moody, the upstairs restaurant, in contrast, boasts “ash-toned driftwood dining chairs paired with decadent marble tables and refined tableware.”

There is no Zorba, Demis or Nana soundtracking our visit. Less bouzouki, more ambient beats. Whatever, I’m not paying much heed. The quality of the small plates arriving grabs me. Starring roles for taramasalata, octopus, lamb and the fluffiest of pitas, all taken to a level way beyond the vacation tavernas of Shirley Valentine (filmed on Mykonos).

I haven’t quite expected this, having sniffed at the presence of Cantonese spiced ribs, wagyu, ceviches and Andean antichucos on the menu (thankfully no Nobu-esque black cod). Then again Tattu never set out to be totally ‘authentic’ Chinese.

Let me quote the Fenix ‘story’. Every restaurant has to have one these days.“In Greek mythology, the Phoenix represents triumph over adversity, cyclical regeneration and rebirth. Only one of these rare creatures can exist at a time, and each lives for 500 years. As that lifecycle ends, a nest is built and set on fire. From those flames new life arises, and the process continues. Fenix was born into uncertain and challenging times, and its character is its destiny — breathing fresh energy into a Manchester dining scene when it’s most needed.”

Key players in all this are the two chefs they have hired with strong Mykonos links. Executive Head Chef, Ippokratis Anagnostelis and Head Chef, Zisis Giannouras worked together at the high end Kenshō Ornos suites hotel on the island. Anagnostelis’s CV reads like a roll call of Greece’s finest dining spots, including the Michelin-starred Hytran in Athens, putting a contemporary spin on traditional dishes. The influences are obvious at Fenix, but it feels more relaxed than most destination restaurants with service especially impressive just a week in.

So which dishes did I particularly like?

(Once I‘ve decided to pass on the Wagyu Stifado (£85), one dish that has made it over from Kenshō. A treatment where striploin is glazed with wagyu jus, then served with braised onions, spices and cumin potato emulsion, seemed a deconstruction too far.)

Sea bass off the robato, to share (£95)

For a tenner more, a dish that isn’t strictly traditional but feels heart-stoppingly Hellenic – the boned fish stuffed with spinach and shiitake is served with a lemon-yuzu dressing. Oh, and it looks amazing.

Athenian Tartare with Caviar (£19)

No apologies for hitting a bass note again so soon. Fenix offers it ceviche style with a South American dressing of tiger’s milk, avocado, kiwi fruit and jalapeño, but this fresh treatment serving it with saffron, citrus and Ossetra caviar surpasses it.

Grilled Octopus (£18)

Can’t resist tender cephalod and this comes with an earthy split pea cream and parsley vinaigrette that’s so powerful.

Orzo with langoustine and feta (£32)

A glorious take on a risotto with the rice-like pasta suffused with a rich bisque cut through with the sharp cheese

‘Broken Down Tart’ (£14.95)

Meat at last. I presume the presentation is an affectionate homage to the Greek taverna tradition of plate smashing (somewhat suppressed nowadays by health and safety issues). This is basically slow-cooked lamb shank and parsnip cream baked tarte tatin style in delicate pastry.

All this came off the a la carte, which can soon add up, but there is a variety of set menus, including an attractive lunch deal for £31.50. The wine list is a well-balanced, global offering, straying off, as you’d expect into some mega-expensive ‘trophy’ choices. I’m a huge fan of Greek wines and there is representation from quality operators such as Gaia, Thymiopoulos and the late great Haridimos Hatzidakis, who put Santorini on the map as a cult wine spot.

There’s also an inevitable cocktail project, celebrating the four elements that shape the mythical Greek Isles; Water, Earth, Air and Fire. One example: ‘Whirlpool Fizz’ inspired by Charybdis the sea monster that sucked ships to their doom, combining gin with “a silky backbone of stone fruit and tonic”. Down in one then.

Fenix, The Goods Yard Building, Goods Yard Street, Manchester M3 3BG. 0161 646 0231.

I was a lunch guest of Fenix’s owners, the Permanently Unique restaurant group. My main image is of Wagyu Stifado.

11 December 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Beer, Books, Food, Wine

Random reads – my recommended books of 2023

Playing catch-up with my Books of the Year recommendations. Late to the party. Every weekend supplement has already been swamped with the buggers. Alas, there has been less evidence than usual of my fave tips – highbrow critics seeking to impress with the likes of “the great belle lettrist Attila Kosztolányi’s magnum opus, many years in the making, has finally seen the light of day. Read in the original Hungarian, it’s a triumph – let’s hope for a translation soon.”
You’ll find my choices less smarmy, I hope. The list is not, as you’d expect, dominated by food books. For research purposes, I have mostly been delving into scholarly old favourites or making practical use of the jus-stained kitchen recipe faithfuls. Blame the lockdown time on my hands for certain continuing reading obsessions – German history and our own 17th century registers of recusants and Roundheads.
Let’s start then with two magisterial examples of the former, published in 2023…

Beyond The Wall by Katja Hoyer (Penguin £26) and In Search of Berlin by John Kampfner (Atlantic £22)

The first account puts a human face on the DDR, taking it beyond the received wisdom of Stasiland, Trabants and steroid-pumped athletes. Hoyer, a British-based historian, is herself an ‘Ostie’, but she was only four years old when the Berlin Wall came down, transforming a country that epitomised the Cold War. In the re-united Germany three decades on reviews have been mixed, but I found it convincing and revelatory. An equally provocative exploration of the reunited state was Kampfner’s best-selling Why Germans Do It Better. Now the former Telegraph foreign correspondent, who reported on the epic events of 1989, puts today’s restored capital in the context of a thousand years of often troubled history. Riveting for an old Berlin hand like myself.

The Secret Hours by Mick Herron (Baskerville £22)

Divided Berlin was, of course, the backdrop for the Cold War spy genre, notably in the works of John Le Carré and Len Deighton. Herron, touted as Le Carré’s natural heir but very much his own man as the laureate of a deadbeat alternative espionage, is best known for his Slow Hours novel sequence, the third of which is currently being screened by Apple TV with Gary Oldman playing grubby anti-hero Jackson Lamb. The Secret Hours is a standalone title but Herron can’t resist giving (an unnamed) Lamb a key walk-on part in a tale that revolves around skulduggery in today’s security circles and an operation to find a Stasi murderer in 1990s Berlin which goes wrong. Intricately plotted surprises come in from the cold.

The Lock-up by John Banville (Hutchinson £22) and Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Faber £18.99)

The Irish penchant for fiction is as vibrant as ever with Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song recently scooping the Booker Prize. My own bookish bucket list for Christmas, though, is headed by The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright, the greatest Irish-based female writer (sorry Sally Rooney). No apologies, though, for recommending two genre-straddling novels by male veterans that have delighted me. The garlanded ‘literary’ novels of old school man of letters Banville have always left me slightly cold, but I am besotted with his increasing dips into crime fiction, featuring an odd couple with their own demons (naturally) – pathologist Dr. Quirke and Detective Inspector St John Strafford. The latest tracks back to 1950s Dublin where young history scholar Rosa Jacobs is found dead in her car. The investigation takes in the Italian mountaintops of Italy, the front lines of World War II Bavaria and deepest rural Ireland.

Barry’s novel also features a cop, retired to a castle in the Dublin coastal suburbs but with skeletons in the cupboard just waiting to be rattled as his past dealings are investigated by former colleagues. It’s dreamlike, almost gothic, packed with red herrings and unreliable narrators. Grim, melancholy, I loved it.

The Blazing World by Jonathan Healey (Bloomsbury £30)

Historical fiction may have peaked with the great Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (my own favourite still Iain Pears’ An Instance at the Fingerpost) but it’s in good hands with the likes of Robert Harris, whose Act of Oblivion (2022), featuring the 17th century pursuit across the New World of two Roundhead regicides, offered contemporary resonances. I read it alongside Anna Keay’s magisterial account of the decade after Charles I’s execution, The Restless Republic. What a blessing then the arrival of a complementary yet contrasting “New History of a Revolutionary Century”. It is a vivid, witty account of certain key characters, who exemplify a divisive age. The title comes from the extravagant aristocrat/polymath Margaret Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle, who, after the Restoration, imagined an alternative “Blazing World” of order and tranquillity in contrast to the “malicious detractions” and “homebred insurrection” through which she had lived. My next period read? Likely to be September’s Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish by Francesca Peacock.

Invitation to a Banque t by Fuchsia Dunlop (Particular £25) and Stu ffed by Pen Vogler (Atlantic £22)

Let’s stay scholarly as we finally stray into food and drink territory with two books I have already reviewed at length. The first explores the vast complexity of Chinese cuisine, combining historical research and contemporary travelogue; the second, as I summed up, is “a surprisingly political survey of feast and famine with a particular emphasis on the damage wrought on subsistence by 300 years of Enclosures forcing 6.8 million acres of communal land into private ownership. The book title is not just about a full stomach, it’s also about being shafted.” So food adulteration in Victorian times is on a ley line to toxic ultra-processed foods in ours. Plus ça change

Flavour Thesaurus 2 by Nikki Segnit (Bloomsbury £20) and Mother Tongue by Gurdeep Loyal (4th estate £26)

Segnit’s book is the sequel to her eye-opening debut The Flavour Thesaurus, which became an instant classic when it was published 13 years ago. There had never been anything quite like it before, this playful exploration of ingredient matches springing from a flavour wheel of her own random devising. A reference book born out of erudite research that was equally at home by the bedside or on the kitchen table. More of the same, yes, but the new flavours are predominantly plant-based. From zeitgeist-led vegan, from kale to cashew, pomegranate to pistachio, seaweed to tamarind, but eggs and cheese forced their toothsome way in, too.

A la Segnit, I like to be surprised and Gurdeep Loyal’s colourful cookbook lives up to its fusion manifesto declaring: “Food is a living form of culture that evolves: its boundaries are fluid, blurred, porous and dynamic… authenticity is an unending reel of culinary snapshots, an evolving spectrum that captures many transformative moments along flavourful journeys in generations of kitchens.”

Before Mrs Beeton – Elizabeth Raffald, England’s Most Influential Housekeeper by Dr Neil Buttery (Pen and Sword Books, £20)

Fanny Craddock was a Fifties/Sixties celeb chef in black and white telly world. If the box had been invented in the late 18th century I’m sure Manchester-based Elizabeth Raffald would have had her own show, such was her dynamism. Food historian Buttery charts the dizzying career that culminated in The Experienced English Housekeeper (1786). Why she even gave away the recipe for her invention for the Eccles Cake and there are strong claims that Mrs Beeton “adapted” many of her recipes.

The New French Wine by Jon Bonné (£112) mention Andrew Jefford and natural wine and Noma 2 – Vegetable-Forest-Ocean by Rene Redzepi, Mette Søberg and Junichi Takahashi (Artisan £60)

Two door-stoppers that were published first abroad last year and seeped in to the UK. I first encountered Bonné a decade ago when his New California Wine was a valuable companion on an epic vineyard-led road trip of the state. Since when he has moved to France and compiled this deluxe definitive compendium of the country’s wine makers at a time of profound change. I still treasure Andrew Jefford’s The New France but, published in 2002, it is now ‘Old France’, superseded by this remarkable celebration of a unique wine culture.

The groundbreaking cultural phenomenon that is Noma is reinventing itself as a food laboratory (shades or restaurant rival El Bulli). The gorgeous Noma 2, a hymn to foraging, fermentation and a wacky food aesthetic, may read like a swansong but I’ll take it as a launchpad (though it’s very weighty for lift-off).

Manchester’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars by Matthew Curtis (CAMRA Books, £16.99 pb) and A Beautiful Pint: One man’s search for the perfect pint of Guinness by Ian Ryan (Bloomsbury, £9.99)

Two much slimmer volumes that have a practical purpose in guiding you to the authors’ recommended watering holes. Matthew Curtis, author of the refreshing Modern British Beer upped sticks from London to live in Stockport. Result is a CAMRA beer guide like no other, encompassing craft bars, restaurants and taprooms as well as the traditional pubs. The list of ‘special’ starred establishments is spot on, as is this incomer’s research for a potted history of the scene.

If that’s a perfect stocking-filler for the hophead in your life, it has a dark rival in Cork exile Ryan’s more niche print follow-up to his notorious Shit London Guinness Instagram and Twitter accounts. The writing is no on a par with Curtis’s but the passion shines through, along with some technical stuff I’d never given thought to. Best of all is his Guinness outlets to visit section. Without it I would never have strayed into the beyond marvellous Cock Tavern on Phoenix Road, just a stroll from Euston Station, where Sheila from Sligo served me the best Guinness I’ve ever had in the UK – at an amazing £4.50 a pint.

Steeple Chasing by Peter Ross (Headline £22) and The Wasteland: Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis (Penguin £12.99 pb)

There are few books I re-read in a year but Steeple Chasing has been one of them. It’s the Glasgow-based feature writer’s follow-up to A Tomb With A View: The Stories and Glories of Graveyards and is even more fascinating. Which is saying something. Elegiac, yes but more… The melancholy element is inevitable, if not as pervasive as in its predecessor despite the pandemic hovering over the journeys. On first reading I pinned it down as a neo-WG Sebaldian quest for meaning among Britain’s steeples and bell towers, but with its own special radiance, especially when he explores the sacred territory of Suffolk.

I inevitably re-read TS Eliot’s great poem in response to Matthew Hollis’s excavation of the post First World War milieu it grew out of – like “lilacs out of the dead land”. So much personal unhappiness fertilised his creation, trimmed into shape for publication by ‘ll Miglior Fabbro’ (the better craftsman), Ezra Pound. Let us salute both of them, “looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

10 December 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Blossoming Perry – ‘the best examples are the match of anything ever fermented’

Perry – I put the the big questions to Adam Wells

On fire! Musu chef Shaw’s smoking take on the Land of the Rising Sun

Land of the Rising Sun – a journey beyond Japan

Yakima Valley dreaming! C’mon smell the hops – and the cilantro

Tom and Laurissa’s Pignut – sustainable restaurant that prides itself on going to ground

So what were the stand-out dishes – and wines – of this leisurely lunch?

Historic Brewing Conference, Mcr – cheers to August’s unmissable mash-up

The North strikes back – Bavette, Lamb of Tartary and Eight at Gazegill

Bavette – echoes of the legendary Racine

The Lamb of Tartary – legend in the past, maybe in the making

Eight at Gazegill – I remember when this was all fields…

My favourite new restaurant in London? Donia – a Filipino fantasia

Factfile

A night of celebration – and campaigning – as MFDF Awards are handed out

All the fantastic winners at Manchester Food and Drink Awards 2023

Mythical feasts of Mykonos as Fenix lands by the ‘wine dark’ Irwell

So which dishes did I particularly like?

Random reads – my recommended books of 2023

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