Restaurants Archives - Page 5 of 13

BiBi – an Indian restaurant like no other thanks to the genius of Chet Sharma

I relish a certain symmetry in my metropolitan dining out patterns. Take Bouchon Racine and BiBi. The former has just been named Best New Opening by the National Restaurant Awards and placed at no.5 in their prestigious top 50. I’d already visited it in Farringdon, driven there by word of mouth and a residual reverence for its previous incarnation in Knightsbridge.

Flash back to the 2022 NRAs and flying in at no.5 and as best newcomer, yes, BiBi, a very different beast from Henry Harris’s take on a classic French bistro. In a discreetly glamorous Mayfair setting chef patron Chet Sharma nods to his Indian heritage both in decor and what’s on the plate but applies culinary methods learned in the development kitchens of our own Michelin heavies L’Enclume, The Ledbury and Moor Hall. The latter’s Mark Birchall is a particular culinary inspiration. He also worked a stint at the Basque Country’s Mugaritz, a respectable 31st in the 2023 World’s Top 50 Restaurants list announced this week.

No more lists I promise, just take on board that there is high-powered operator a couple of metres across the counter from me, assembling small plates in front of the sizzling sigree grill. The fish and meat that feel the heat are the best of British, the premium spices and other exotics sourced from across the Indian sub-continent. There’s a little map showing you locations on the back of the Chef’s Selection Menu.

At lunchtime there is an à la carte offering and a new four course set menu for £35, but that Chef’s Selection is the only evening option at £125 a head (an optional and top notch wine flight costs £75). The reasoning behind this no-choice direction, which pointedly avoids calling itself a ‘tasting menu’? Even though seven courses plus additional snacks sounds just that… with a certain welcome brevity.

“There’s some bad branding around the phrase ‘tasting menu’,” Chet Sharma tells Tony Naylor for a fascinating Observer Food Monthly article that dropped just as I started to gather my thoughts for this appraisal of BiBi’s cuisine.

The piece goes on: “BiBi’s £125 dinner menu is expensive. But crazy as it may sound, says Sharma, it was introduced to provide value. In London, he argues, you can easily spend £70 or £80 a head on fairly average food, whereas BiBi’s food (“complex enough to sit alongside the most complex dishes in the country”) aims to provide far greater bang for your buck.

“BiBi’s chefs are not wasting hours of costly labour prepping ingredients that aren’t sold. They are focused on perfecting a streamlined number of dishes. This helps Sharma keep tight control of his fluctuating food costs, and enables him to flexibly gild dishes: ‘Let’s add morels to this dish, for example’, when prices allow.”

So did the BiBi food live up to its reputation?

Easily. The snacks signal the playful intent, so far removed from stuffier high end London Indians (BiBi’s owners JKS are also responsible for Trishna, Gymkhana and Brigadiers). Take the papad scrolls flavoured with pungent cave-aged Wookey Hole Cheddar to be dunked in the dankest of green chutneys – pure chlorophyll pesto. Or a single Louët-Feisser oyster (from Carlingford Lough, also, incidentally, favoured by Bouchon Racine) dressed with passion-fruit Jal Jeera, a kind of tart cumin-scented lemonade.

In the second course proper there’s a similar culinary conceit, where an Orkney scallop sits ceviche like in its shell, loaded with a spiced up Nimbu Pani (lime soda, the Sub-Continent’s favourite soft drink). In between there’s the punch of a BiBi ‘tartare’. The tenderest of Belted Galloway beef is studded with fermented Tellicherry peppercorns to create a ‘chaat’ of pepper fry. Street food elevated, as they say in the trade.

Next up a is a Parsi special occasion classic called a macchi, where white fish fillets, often pomfret, are coated in a paste of ground coconut and sour mango, fresh coriander and mint, and steamed in banana leaves. In the Sharma version, with the emphasis on pickled green chillies, the fish is halibut and the result is hot and gorgeous.

Now that grill kicks in. It’s a £20 supplement for the Aged Swaledale Lamb Barra Kebab (main image). I couldn’t resist and it proved the dish of the evening (against a strong field). This traditional Mughli chop, charred and yet tender, comes encircled by spirals of a sensational Kashmiri doon chettin (walnut chutney), which is fiery but also in perfect balance.

Suddenly and surprisingly the counter in front of me fills up with a parade of dishes that signify ‘this is your main’. A pillowy roomali naan and a goodly helping of rice are there to mop up the juices from an ex-dairy goat Galouti Kebab and Sharmaji’s Lahori Chicken. Galouti means ‘melt in the mouth and this dish involving minced mutton or goat (interchangeable in North Indian cuisine) was created for a toothless old Nawab in Lucknow. The Lahori chicken has been marinated in yoghurt and spices before being barbecued. The whey collected from hanging the yoghurt combines with cashew to make a remarkable sauce alongside some wild garlic puree and a sharp cauliflower chutney.

Strained yoghurt is the base for the delicate shrikhand dessert featuring strawberry and meadowsweet. To conclude a kulfi ’lolly’, given an equally neat presentation to conclude a beguiling experience that redefines high end Indian restaurant food.

BiBi? A homage to Grandma with a contemporary cutting edge

You’ve been waiting for me to explain the name BiBi? There are echoes of some Sixties boutique there and isn’t there a Korean pop chanteuse with that moniker. Actually it’s an Urdu title roughly translating as ‘lady of the house’, often applied to grandmas and yes there are decorative touches honouring Chet’s own bibis – a wooden beaded curtain similar to the one in his grandma’s own kitchen, while Kashmiri Paisley motifs on walls and bar stools is inspired by her shawls. Antique mirrors and lamps add to the surprising homeliness in a tight 33-cover space.

All this is slightly at odds with the back story of Chef Chet. All that high end culinary discipleship that followed his physics doctorate at Oxford and an obvious commitment to sustainability that is very much of the moment. The kitchen grills with sustainable Holm Oak charcoal from the South Downs; the menu paper is compostable. You do sense though that at BiBi he has come ‘home’. And there is heart there. Utterly surprising and revelatory in the oligarch’s playground that most of Mayfair (and Knightsbridge) has become.

BiBi, 42 North Audley Street, Mayfair, London, W1K 6ZP. Vegetarian and pescatarian tasting menus are available.

27 June 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Cocktails, Drink, Food, Restaurants

Stunning 20 Stories, Black Friar’s grounded garden and a true rooftop buzz at Climat

A head for heights? Most certainly as long as I‘ve a cocktail in my hand or, better still, a series of small plates arriving against a panoramic backdrop. To satisfy my needs, every high rise development these days seems to come with a rooftop bar or restaurant. At the Manchester version of Soho House, due later this year, they are even throwing in a swimming pool eight storeys up below its bar and I note that the ubiquitous Gino D’Acampo has been getting in on the act over in Liverpool, opening an eponymous Sky Bar Terrace at the top of the INNSiDE by Meliá hotel.

It may be that city’s highest alfresco restaurant and bar, but at 270 ft it’s a mere molehill compared with the tallest viewpoint I’ve visited – Chicago’s Willis Tower, the Western Hemisphere’s third highest building at 1,730ft. One caveat, its Sky Deck with jutting-out glass Ledge is the same height (1,450ft) as the top of that old stager, New York’s Empire State.

Both dwarf our own Shard in London, which stands at a mere 1,020ft. One advantage is that the 72nd floor viewing gallery is partially open air, offering views of the pinnacle, as well as 360-degree views around the building. I’m still gob struck by how tiny Tower Bridge looked from 800ft above.

All of which brings us to Manchester’s 20 Stories, whose major selling point is its huge outdoor terrace and bar (with appropriate shelters for when the city’s weather lives up to its reputation). At 300ft, it’s a glamorous, stunning spot to take in the ever-changing skyline and cityscape (see main image). You can understand its appeal as a special place for a drink and a people watch. The wine list is arguably the best in town, but food quality has been variable with a constant change of head chefs since its inception in 2018.

I dined there recently, road-testing their new five-course tasting menu, available Monday to Thursday, 5.30pm-8.pm. It started well with a vegan opener of broccoli steak with horseradish and lemon, but after that it didn’t live up to its £65 a head price. A better bet is to pick from the more casual Terrace Menu, perhaps mixing and matching tomato, basil and parmesan arancini, truffle fries and BBQ flat iron steak tacos with a tipple or two from their Aperol Cocktail Menu.

Black Friar, Salford – keeping it down to earth

Casual and al fresco is a good way to go in this sweltering summer and the maturing ground-level garden of the re-born Black Friar is a choice spot, even if there is no view to speak of. Well, who would want to ogle the traffic hurtling down Trinity Way? By chance, it has chef connections with 20 Stories. Aiden Byrne, launch chef there, was scheduled to do the same for the Black Friar but pulled out around Pandemic time; his replacement Ben Chaplin came from… you guessed it.

His 20 Stories fine dining pedigree was obvious when I first sat down to eat in the newly planted garden with its big fence two summers ago. A couple of dishes were over-elaborate for what was aimed as a gastropub. The menu has since settled down from trying to balance all this with ‘pub classics’, maintaining high quality ingredients while taking fewer risks.

It is good they are still making the most of their urban greenery, though when we went recently to sample their summer ‘Garden Menu’ gusty showers weren’t doing it any favours.This particular menu is served straight from the outdoor bars, so we benefited from its canopy and ski heaters. And a couple of goblets of holy Gavi to heal the soul. There’s a choice of three amply topped flatbreads, including an artichoke version for vegans, who can also dive into a Falafel Friar Bowl. Alongside the charcuterie and cheese platters sat our big extra temptation, definitely not plant-based: Honey-glazed Ham Hock with Welsh rarebit and pickled onions. The Black Friar is very generous with its pickles and, alas with a mountain of coleslaw that accompanied the hock. As a £17 sharing plate this was a meal in itself. We took the half-stripped bone home with us. Combined with yellow split peas and stock, it formed an un-seasonally ballasting soup that lasted us all next day. As blazing sunshine reappeared.

Queen Bee with a red dot, signature vol au vents – it must be Climat

The other end of Blackftriars Street and Chris Laidler is showing off his stings on the rooftop terrace of Climat, now home to four hives and 40,000 bees, including a Queen, marked with a red dot. The wine-led restaurant’s founder and his exec chef Luke Richardson also brought back from Hampshire a further 50,000 bees that are now ensconced at their respective homes in Wrexham and Chester – all contributing honey to Climat and sister restaurant Covino in Chester, a place I also really love.

Chris tells me they expect the total of 90,000 bees will swell to 500,000 over the summer before reducing in size to weather the winter months. He’s resigned to the occupational hazards of bee-keeping – despite wearing the full gear to handle them. He’s more worried that there’ll be enough opportunities for his charges to pollinate in Manchester city centre, even though it’s leafier than you think.

And there is competition. Chris points across the road to the roof of the car park behind the brutalist former Ramada Renaissance, slowly being transformed into the Treehouse Hotel. Here Manchester Cathedral have installed a total of 10 hives in addition to the six already on the cathedral’s roof producing ‘Heavenly Honey’.

It’s amazing what your eye takes in from a great height. On the eighth floor of Blackfriars House, Climat actually benefits from not being up in the stratosphere. I prefer the more intimate nosiness of being level or slightly above rival rooftops, so you don’t miss intricate features. Seen from the outside terrace (well away from the swarms) or through floor-to -ceiling plate glass. Perhaps with a 500cl carafe of Bourgogne Aligoté at your elbow – ‘is that honey on the nose?’ – and a signature vol au vent while awaiting a small plates parade of what Luke dubs his ‘Parisian expat food’.

25 June 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Books, Food, Restaurants

Spring is the season: sorrel and the fish dish that revolutionised cuisine

What links the sprightliest greenery in my vernal garden with a dish created in 1962 at a railroad halt at the head of the navigable Loire? L’oseille is what the French call sorrel and in the unassuming industrial town of Roanne two chefs created culinary magic by marrying this acidic, zesty herb to a salmon escalope.

I first read about it in 1978 in remarkable book called Great Chefs of France, essentially a handsomely illustrated roll call of all the figures who created ‘Nouvelle Cuisine’. Roanne-based Les Freres Troigros, Jean and Pierre, sounded the most fun. Asked to create a dish for Paul Bocuse’s Legion d’Honneur lunch for Giscard d’Estaing, they came up with Escalope de saumon a l’oseille and the rest is history. I have been slavishly following the recipe for this delicate, almost Zen-like dish since 1980 when the brothers published their own cookbook, Nouvelle Cuisine, part of a series translated into English that included Cuisine Minceur by Michel Guerard, the only one of that groundbreaking kitchen generation still alive.

By 1968 the brothers had gained a third Michelin star for the restaurant, which it has held ever since, while morphing from the station’s Hotel Moderne, prospering from the Route Nationale 7 running past, via a more sophisticated makeover in 1976, to its current incarnation after a switch to a rural site in 2007. Jean died of a heart attack in 1983, Pierre in 2020 at the age of 92, the Troigros legacy long since consolidated in the hands of Pierre’s son Michel (and now a new generation). Influences on the menu in recent times have been Japanese, a logical extension of the pared down intensity of the original Nouvelle Cuisine movement.

Alas, I’ve never eaten in the restaurant proper. On a press trip to explore the wines of the Roannaise region a Troigros lunch was organised for us. A lovely prix fixe three courses yes, but it was in a spin-off down the street, the Cafe Epicerie Le Central. It cost just 23 euros, quarter of the price of a main at the big place, where the other day I struggled to find salmon with sorrel on the website menu.

My own sorrel crop has mostly been perennial. When one year it failed we were rescued by a cutting from the unlikeliest of sources, the Michelin-starred Mr Underhills in Ludlow.

Chris Bradley was virtually a one-man band at the stove (hence a no choice five course menu) with his wife Judy front of house. Quite a team, both now retired, the building down by Dinham Weir sold on as a private house.

The no choice dinner we had in the garden was utterly memorable with salmon and sorrel as a starter. Which led to our lament about our own lost herb. Not only did Judy come up with a replacement from her own garden, she even volunteered Chris to drive us back to our hotel in the absence of Ludlow taxis. Now that was Michelin star service. Here’s my take on the original Troisgros recipe…

*Salmon in a creamy sorrel sauce – a dish that has stood the test of time*

Ingredients

1kg fresh middle cut of salmon, skinned; 80g fresh sorrel leaves; 2 shallots; 500ml fish fumet; 4tbsp dry white wine; 2tbsp Noilly Prat; 400ml double cream; 40g butter; juice of ½ lemon; salt and freshly ground pepper; small amount of arachide or other light oil.

Method

Divide the salmon into four fillets and put them between two sheets of lightly oiled wax paper and flatten the fish evenly, using a mallet. Remove the stems from the sorrel by stripping the central veins from each leaf.

To prepare the fish sauce put the fish fumet, white wine, Noilly Prat and shallots into a saucepan and cook over high heat until a near glaze is reached. Add the cream and reduce until the sauce is slightly thickened. Add the sorrel for around 20 seconds while stirring. Then incorporate the butter off the heat. Before serving add a few drops of lemon juice

To cook the fillets, sprinkle salt and pepper on the least presentable side. Heat up the oil (or use a non-stick pan), then add the salmon with the seasoned side down for 25 seconds. then turn to the second side for another 25 seconds. The salmon should be undercooked since it will continue to cook after plating. Add the sorrel sauce, enlivened with a squeeze of lemon, to each warmed plate then add the salmon. Voilà!

29 May 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Beer, Food, Restaurants

Just one more Poretti? Manchester’s Festa Italiana matches food and birra

Poretti, Moretti, Peroni? As if they were concocted on a Scrabble board (big score for Mezzogiorno, but I digress), all those big Italian beer brand names sort of morph into one generic light lager. That’s what they taste like to me. Still, on a (let’s pray) sunny August Bank Holiday Weekend in Manchester’s Cathedral Gardens they hit the spot to accompany pizza slices, arancini, even gelato. Yes, Festa Italiana (August 25-27) is back for its sixth outing. With, you guessed it, sponsors Poretti offering a new upfront attraction.

Equally refreshing is the presence of newer blood at the demo counters. Yes, there will be returning veterans such as Jamie Oliver mentor and UK brand ambassador for Parmigiano Reggiano Gennaro Contaldo and Giancarlo Caldesi (Return to Tuscany, Saturday Kitchen, Sunday Brunch), alongside Festa founder Maurizio Cecco. But they will be joined by rising stars such as Great British Bake Off 2021 winner Giuseppe Dell’Anno and Masterchef UK 2021 quarter-finalist/ICG Cooking Competition Award winner Sofia Gallo. Another huge Festa fave is pastaia Carmela Sereno Hayes offering pasta classes for all ages.

The line-up has been announced in a week when Maurizio has also been celebrating the first birthday of the latest outpost of his Manchester empire, Salvi’s, set among the four colossal towers of Deansgate Square. Prosecco and Poretti (naturally) flowed freely at the big party in this sleek, buzzing restaurant.

Festa Italiana offers an alternative immersion in all things authentic Italian and gastronomic . Think al fresco meets dolce vita in the shadow of the National Football Museum and the Corn Exchange. Street food and workshops aplenty. Music is also very much part of this very family-friendly, free-to enter festival. Want to sing along to That’s Amore? Or Tu Vuo’ Fa L’Americano?At the live music stage your chance will come. Possibly fuelled by ample sips of Poretti…

The Birrificio Angelo Poretti will be pouring at its ‘iconic Piazza’, pairing its beer with food at a sit-down dining spot. This ‘Grande Tavole’ experience is a ticketed event on Saturday 26th with the area open to all on Sunday 27th.

19 May 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Wine

Bravo Bouchon Racine, where our Henry rolls back the years for this solo hero

Intimidated? Not easily. Yet there have been occasions. I recall a stay in a Mayfair apartment with our own private butler. “Order me a cab for Loftus Road.” An eyebrow-raised response: “Might that be the soccer stadium? Will sir be requiring a scarf and rattle?” Thankfully, in the midst of the away support, you are enveloped in a communal support system. Buoyed by some Blackburn Rovers umbilical cord. There’s not quite the same safety net when you are dining solo in the capital.

*The legendary Henry Harris couldn’t be happier chalking up a new era for Racine*

I tell myself I’ve alway found it a test of a restaurant how they handle a ‘Gourmet No Mates’. Maybe they’ll mistake me for a Michelin inspector and either up their game… or piss in my potage. But that’s all just fanciful. For my lone foray to Fallow in the autumn I was ushered to the chef’s table counter, as requested, and soon discovered I wasn’t alone in being alone. Next door, from Japan, was a fellow seeker after the sustainable culinary holy grail at London’s hottest restaurant. Just off Haymarket, it was bustling front of house and in the open kitchen right before me. To be on the safe side I ingratiated myself with the Irish sommelier by ordering a palate-cleansing pint of Guinness. Among the occupied throng I felt welcome and the whole food experience was worth the risk.

Reassured, last month I struck out with a hat-trick of solo efforts in Farringdon, Soho and Shoreditch respectively – Bouchon Racine, reincarnation of Henry Harris’s legendary Parisian-style bistro in Knightsbridge; wine-led Noble Rot on the site of the old Gay Hussar; and Manteca, hippest of Italian nose-to-tail newcomers, ironically replacing a Pizza Express. The space almost became Rambutan, who’ve just opened near Borough Market, but that’s a whole different story. Rambutan

Manteca

Let’s start with the latter, heaving on a Sunday evening, where it was again my choice to bag a counter. My luck was in as they sat me next to the salumi slicer. Hypnotic. A bigger deal than you might imagine; they cure their charcuterie in-house. A couple my age, bearing no tats or facial hair, urged me to tuck into the Saddleback coppa and, at a hefty sounding £10, it was remarkably sweet and creamy after its sojourn in the basement hanging cabinet.

The sommelier this time was from the Southern Med via Leeds. His buttonholing me about was I from those parts (Yorkshire) put me at my ease, as did the red I ordered – a Dolcetto from AJ Vajra, a Piedmont winemaking family I know well. Light and fragrant, belying its deep purple hue, it was a a perfect companion for every morsel, from some pillowy focaccia through to the heartiest of pasta mains, fazzoletti with duck ragù and duck fat pangrattato (£15, I resisted the £10 winter truffle supplement). The wine list a a real thing of beauty, ranging from the reasonably priced rustic to stellar Tuscan royalty. Authentic credentials? 20 varieties of amaro. Cynar, Fernet Branca knew, but Madame Milu, Ferro Chiva Baliva and Ramazzotti? Maybe another time.

Yes, you’d be right in assuming no Italian presence in the ownership or probably the kitchen brigade (though it was hard to make them out in the frantic blur of the open kitchen). The restaurant is a collab between Smokestak barbecue king David Carter and Chris Leach, once of another carnivorous joint, Pitt Cue. Both huge Italophiles, obviously.

Before the duo beached up in Shoredith Manteca had been a start-up project at 10 Heddon Street, then a standalone restaurant in Soho. But it is here among the bare, plastered walls it truly seems to have found its mojo. Dining on my tod, I obviously went for small plates, tempted though I was by a wood-fired whole John Dory or a Creedy Carver duck.

My healthy greens were puntarella alla romana, its bitter leaves given a gladiator’s thrust by anchovy and chilli (£8). Pig’s head fritti (£8) next, their over-the top spice hit down to a dollop of pilacca. The chilli heat was subtler in a slick portion of line caught pollock crudo (£12), blood orange giving it a Sicilian feel.

My £15 fazzoletti with ragù was slightly less in your snout than what became a Manteca signature dish when Shaun Moffat (now at the Edinburgh Castle, Ancoats) was chef there – a pig skin ragù topped with parmesan and served with a dipping chunk of the same skin crisped. Manteca comes from the Spanish word for pork fat or lard. excpect you guessed something like that.

Manteca, 49-51 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3PT (020 7033 6642).

Noble Rot

You wait five years for a second Noble Rot restaurant to bob up and before you can find a gap to book your solitary table at the Soho version they’ve opened a third one – in Shepherd Market, Mayfair. I was hoping to make up for a disappointing experience, just before the Pandemic, in the original Lamb’s Conduit Street Rot, where the food didn’t match up to the wine or the atmosphere of the unreconstructed 1701 townhouse. I’d been buying the Noble Rot wine magazine, out of which it sprang in 2015, and still do, on occasion buying wine from its allied Shrine to Vine operation. The sophomore Soho site is, in contrast, an irregular old haunt of mine as The Gay Hussar. Not that I frequented it in the way that generations of Labour politicos and journalists did. Not for me the scheming cabals, who used the upstairs dining room as their canteen; I just enjoyed the goose-fat and goulasch, the veal stuffed cabbage and sour cherry strudels of this very Hungarian restaurant, run by Victor Sassie for 34 years from 1953 until his death. General manager John Wrobel and others kept this time warp going until 2018. What is wonderful is how the rescuing Noble Rot team, whose backers included restaurant reviewing doyenne Marina O’Loughlin, have kept so much of the Georgian interior and atmosphere – albeit with a very different food and wine offering.

Be gone Bull’s Blood and all who go sloshed on it. This being Noble Rot, there’s a comprehensive modern list, offering numerous leftfield wines by the glass. I indulged in a Pittnauer Blaufränkisch from Austria’s Burgenland after a palate refresher of classic Kernel table beer, offering remarkable flavour at just 3.5% ABV. Oh, and a glass of minerally biodynamic Crozes Hermitage Blanc from the brilliant Laurent Habrad in-between.

Thankfully my three course supper was spot on this time. A risotto of palourde clams (£14) offered a sensory overload trinity of flavours – vermouth, fennel and bottarga. It followed by a generous confit duck leg with a classic accompaniment of cavolo nero, lentils and a sauce of Agen prunes and red wine. The £30 price a slight ouch factor. Prunes featured again with hazelnut in a biscuit for a dense wodge of chocolate mousse.

Modern British cuisine beautifully executed and a warm welcome to match. Who needs company? The narrow downstairs dining room accommodated a fellow solo diner, a family with young kids and, shades of the past, in the corner behind me, a couple plotting the political demise of a rival. Cue approval from the Martin Rowson caricatures of past habitués upstairs.

The feelgood aspect was clinched by The Green Scarf Factor. I was already on the Elizabeth Line when I got a text saying I’d left it. They’d stash it away for me. Next day when I dropped by to collect it couldn’t be found and I was in a train rush. Not to worry. When we locate it we’ll post it on to you, they said. And they did.

Noble Rot, 2 Greek St, London W1D 4NB. 020 7183 8190.

Bouchon Racine

Not just the French tragedian Jean famed for his alexandrines, Racine was also a much-loved bistro across from Brompton Oratory in Knightsbridge. The name translates as root and the roots of chef/patron Henry Harris’s culinary inspiration were definitely ‘à travers la Manche’. Alas that quartier beyond Harrods was already being colonised with oligarchs whose tastes ran more to property than French bistro classics and Racine shut in 2015, leaving so many memories.

It was my perennial London bolthole. My wife Theresa and I even took a Paris-based copain there to shame him with this paradigm of ‘petits restaurants’. My dear late dining amie Sarah Hughes would fit in confession at the Oratory before boozy lunch. Even eating there on my own was a perfect comfort zone. Push through the front door’s heavy draught proof drape and you felt cosseted. A glass of Beaujolais at your elbow, a choice of Le Figaro or the Times proffered, while you awaited the likes of oysters, rillettes, rabbit with mustard and creamed spinach and a Valrhona chocolate pot.

All of which dishes, eight years on, I revisited in the upstairs dining room of the Three Compasses, Cowcross Street, opposite Farringdon Station. With Monsieur Harris himself, in front of the Bouchon Racine’s chalked menu board, beaming at the effrontery of reconvening when his fan base had nigh on given up on a permanent return.

That fanbase was very much in evidence one Tuesday lunchtime. Mostly middle-aged trenchermen on the ample side with a long afternoon’s commitment to exploring the wine list. Service was informally impeccable and the simple dining room more Montmartre than you’d expect from a faded old London tavern.

Whisper it, too, the food may be even better than of yore. My oysters were Carlingford’s finest – plump Louet Feissers au naturel, six for £22 – the Rillettes (£11) from Ibiaima pork, sourced from the French Basque country. Then so much tender flesh on the Lapin à la Moutarde (£23), cloaked in smoked bacon, its silkiest of sauces given extra succulence by my swamping the plate with an £8.50 side of spinach creamed with foie gras. Check out the menu board for all the treats I had to resist. No pudding I had told myself but, of course, the tiny two tone pot au chocolate (£8) with my double espresso was de rigueur – as they used to say in Knightsbridge.

The origin of the word bouchon for such a bistro comes from Lyon. They were originally inns for silk workers and the name apparently derives not from corks, as you might imagine, but from a 16th century expression for a bundle of twisted straw. This featured in signs to designate the restaurants. In Farringdon steer your course via the Three Compasses. A solo voyage? You won’t feel marooned.

Bouchon Racine, 66 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6BP (020 7253 3368).

9 May 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Books, Food, Restaurants

Still squeamish about squirrel eating? Well, from little acorns…

Bushy-tailed serendipity rules. There I was, digging out my copy of Robert Owen Brown’s Crispy Squirrel, Vimto Trifle to check out what, as ghost writer, I’d written about the origin of Eccles cakes – for a review of a new biography of 18th century cookery writer/force of nature Elizabeth Raffald – and realising the book is a decade old this year. I still remember the legal worries we had about Vimto challenging the use of their brand name and my own stickler qualms that really it should not be ‘Crispy’ but ‘Crisp’.

In the same week I spotted on social media one of those weary local newspaper clickbait forays – ‘The Manchester restaurant serving up WLD SQUIRREL to adventurous diners’. The story claimed: “For many, it was seen as a culinary step too far, with some urging the restaurant to ‘please leave the squirrels alone’. Others said they drew the line at ‘creamy rodent stew’, but there were also a fair few who were keen to give it a taste.”

*Crispy Squirrel recipe. Images and design by Joby Catto, Anti (Design Services) Limited*

The admirable Street Urchin in Ancoats weren’t exactly skinning endangered red squirrels for the pot, just taking a sustainable approach to the over-abundant grey variety, duplicating pretty much (with interesting twists) Rob’s Southern-fried recipe that put the crispy into deep-fried rodent parts. See below.

Street Urchin chef/patron Kevin Choudhary at Street Urchin has subtly modified his take on buttermilk fried rabbit since the press exposure, partnering it with home-made black pudding, puy lentils, wild garlic and pickled blackberry salad.

Earthy flavours there to echo squirrels’ woodland habitat. 20 years ago Fergus Henderson gave it his own ‘nose to bushy tail’ treatment, braising it with bacon and porcini. That was at his St John restaurant alongside London’s Smithfield Market, which I’m sure didn’t trade in squirrel meat.

The best place to buy it (as recommended in Crispy Squirrel) is the Wild Meat Company in Woodbridge, Suffolk, though I‘ve just checked with their website and it’s fur-on only at the moment, not the ‘oven ready’. Rachel Choudhary tells me squirrel is available from their supplier, the Cartmel Valley Game. Her husband Kevin once worked for Robert Owen Brown, who in turn is an acolyte of Fergus Henderson. From little acorns, as they say.

Whatever your source, do bear in mind it tis one whole squirrel per person. The only substantial fleshy bit is the haunch. Otherwise, it tastes like a subtler version of rabbit with the same low carbon footprint and available the year round.

The Wild Meat Company suggest an alternative recipe to make the most out of this lean beast – roasting it with squash sage or hazelnuts. Or maybe give it the ragu treatment.

Still there remains a taboo feel to squirrel. Like badger hams, horse meat or Mexican mole (oh, no, that’s something quite different). Mountain folk in America’s Deep South are not so squeamish, even if the racoon (different family from the squirrel) apparently makes better eating.

Not that everyone subscribes. US President Calvin Coolidge was sent a raccoon from Mississippi to be served at the 1926 White House Thanksgiving dinner. Rescued from that rocky fate, Rebecca was kept as a pet by First Lady Grace Coolidge.

28 April 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants

Food hall overload? I’m more for supporting great new indie restaurants

Spoiler alert. Ancoats is so last year. Not demonstrably, so but Manchester’s coolest ‘hood is yielding fewer food and drink surprises. The action has moved elsewhere. In contrasting directions. A new wave of indie chefs is bravely fermenting away in other corners of the city centre and further afield. The emphasis is understandably casual. Their rivals for attention, a flurry of gigantic food hall projects, arguably takes casual to a frenetically ridiculous level.

Certainly the ‘golden goose’ seems to be laying its commercial eggs everywhere. That metaphor came to me in response to a puff for the latest project rolling out its CGIs for our delectation – Kargo at Salford Quays. “Blend Family is adept at building new, unique food hall experiences, intricately engineered to become community hubs. With a mix of design and culinary excellence, Blend Family, in partnership with Quayside MediaCity, will showcase the best in up-and-coming food and drink talent, hand chosen and incubated to bring the best in world food under one roof.”

That’s not to diss the street food credentials of Blend, who operate the Cutlery Works in Sheffield (here’s my report) and also GPO in Liverpool, which prompted Guardian reviewer Grace Dent to opine: “I need to ask a very honest question here: are food halls ever a truly satisfying dining experience? I’ve no doubt they seem so on paper and in the marketing meetings, they’re fantastic for filling old, unloved but historically important spaces and they’re good news for downward-spiralling city centres. Yet in reality they’re noisy, unrelaxing and the food is often patchy, with the occasional gem hidden among the colossal choice of menus.”

Spot on, but such criticism is not stifling the food hall stampede. Manchester and its hinterland already boast Exhibition, Society, New Century Hall, Exhibition, Escape to Freight Island (shut for months but due to reopen amid much-publicised unrest from laid-off staff), Stretford, Sale (about to shut permanently) GRUB, Hatch, Hello Oriental, Stockport’s The Produce Hall, the pioneering Altrincham Market plus its siblings Macclesfield’s Picturedrome and Mackie Mayor, this month named the UK’s best by a global travel site.

Now, alongside Kargo (echoes of orthographically challenged foodie neighbourhood Kampus) in the new Quays revamp, Central Bay, we can also expect two further massive projects, this time on post-industrial sites.

Located in the city’s largest factory and metalworks north of Piccadilly Station, the 5,000 capacity Diecast will open in phases from summer 2023 onwards, and will be home to Manchester’s biggest beer garden, brewery, open air BBQ kitchens and a ‘NeoPan’ pizzeria. There are also plans for it to be a huge ‘creative resourc’e. It’s from the team that have done such a good job with Firehouse & Ramona in the NQ, this time aiming to create “one of the most exciting destinations on the planet.”

Further big dreams, from an interloper, Allied London’s shipping container food and drink operator Boxpark. They are calling their new 30,000 sq ft complex on Water Street overlooking the River Irwell Shipyard. Its neighbours will be the Factory International arts venue and Soho House (neither on my bucket list).

No comment on this revelation of its dynamic: “Early plans show that graffiti, huge graphics and industrial features will be part of the aesthetic for the exterior, giving it a Williamsburg Brooklyn kind of feel.” Expect the food hall to offer “a mix of artisan vendors and rolling smaller stalls.”

These are the high profile beasts but they are not alone on the horizon. In the slightly stalled First Street new frontier plans have been submitted for a 400 cover ground floor food hall open to the public in a student accommodation block called The House of Social. World cuisine is the selling point of a fifth food hall in the pipeline on Bury New Road, Broughton. Plans have been approved for a former car repair centre to be transformed into TBNR Foodhall, a 200 cover canteen dining experience with upstairs shisha bar.

Spring awakening for a new wave of restaurants

You’ve probably gathered by now this kind of large communal dining experience is well down my list; the street food scene seems to have been hi-jacked by commercial expediency. Harsh? Maybe the lockdown years, which have made so many folk all the more eager to mingle, have made me keener for a more intense encounter with quality food and drink.

It is interesting that two of my Manchester food heroes have jumped ship from their food hall tenancies. Caroline ‘Sao Paulo Project’ Martins no longer has an outlet in Exhibition and is back at her original pop-up venue, Blossom Street Social with ‘Sampa’; Michael Clay, chef/patron at its stalwart Ancoats neighbour Elnecot, launched his Anglo-Saxon pizza project, Dokes in Society but has now shifted it to a permanent site in Prestwich.

Elsewhere it’s good to see the sites of The Creameries. Chorlton and Cocktail, Ramen Beer + Bun in the Northern Quarter finding new foodie occupants.

Late in 2022 I confess I expected far more closures. Instead a fresh wave of talent has come on board, reinforcing the city’s culinary upturn first initiated by Ancoats warriors Mana, Erst, Jane Eyre, Rudy’s, Edinburgh Castle, Street Urchin and in the city proper 10 Tib Lane and Another Hand. My new faves (including outliers in Marple Bridge, Liverpool and Haslingden) are:

Higher Ground

A new Manchester superstar is born. I am an unapologetic champIon of chef Joseph Otway and the rest of the stellar team, who have finally laid down restaurant roots in their adopted city after pop-ups, a pandemic where they created their own Cinderwood/ market garden, and created Flawd natural wine bar at Islington Marina (still going strong). Read about their commitment to sustainable animal husbandry here. This nose to tail ethos results in my beloved pig’s head terrine.

Climat

I had much fun celebrating the signature snack of this rooftop wine-led restaurant – the vol-au-vent but the small plate menu from exec chef Luke Richardson and head chef Simon Ulph offers more sophisticated delights, as does a wine list majoring on Burgundy. Big plus the cityscape views from the eighth floor of Blackfriars House.

The Alan

Check out my recent review celebrating the impact new exec chef James Hulme has had on the menu in one of Manchester’s coolest looking dining spaces.

Our Place

Iain Thomas was the chef who launched The Alan restaurant in 2022 to great acclaim. Now he and the hotel’s former marketing head David O’Connor have set up this itinerant sustainably focused supper club, initially at The People’s History Museum. Read my interview with Iain about his food philosophy.

Stock Market Grill

Tom Kerridge was always going to be a hard act follow after he pulled his Bull & Bear project from the upmarket Stock Exchange Hotel. Cocktail kings the Schofield Brothers, who’d already established their Sterling Bar in the basement stepped into the breach and hired Eleanor Bristow from The French as front of house and highly rated Joshua Reed-Cooper (ex-Simon Rogan/Where The Light Gets In) in the kitchen. Classic grill cuisine the aim to match the affluent ambience of the former trading floor.

MUSU

If the converted Stock Exchange represents old money then this ’contemporary Japanese’ restaurant, a £3m investment, is a bold splashing of the cash. It’s undoubtedly mega plush with menu prices to match (£150 for the 11-course kanseiki menu) but the sushi/sashimi raw materials are of the highest quality and the whole food operation is steered by chef/patron Michael Shaw, who brings an impressive Michelin pedigree.

Fold

Bistro and bottle shop it calls itself, so there’s a fine choice of wine to accompany squid bolognese and other quirky dishes from chef Craig Sherrington’s imaginative menu that helps this Marple Bridge newcomer transcend the neighbourhood gem tag. My Fold fave the toasted corn dish (the main image of this piece).

Restaurant Metamorphica

I previewed this ambitious tasting menu operation before it opened in under the radar Haslingden; a return review visit for Manchester Confidential confirmed the star quality of one-man-band chef Steven Halligan.

NORD

I made a rare visit to Liverpool for the recent launch of this new-build restaurant/bar, where chef Daniel Heffy puts to good use his top-end Michelin experience at Frantzen in Stockholm. The name also signals his commitment to the UK’s own northern provenance. Everything came together beautifully in a dish of Cornish white crab, soured cream, pickle silverskin onions and fennel on buttered toast. Like Higher Ground and Climat in Manchester it benefits from the support of developer landlords Bruntwood.

26 March 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Travel

Calçots charring on the grill – it’s my Catalan party and I’ll cry if I want to

It’s that time of year again and as I prepare to barbecue a big bundle of calçots in my rather blustery backyard the whole celebration is tinged with sadness. Because these long thin Catalan onions that resemble a leek (but aren’t related) will forever be associated with Lunya in the Barton Arcade and Iberica in Spinningfields. Both these now departed Hispanic standard bearers in Manchester hosted jolly, messy events around that quirky veg’s brief season. Bibs were essential as the charred objects of our desire, fresh from the coals, were dipped in a pungent Romesco-style sauce and accompanying wine was poured from a great height from needle-nosed porróns.

Calçots’ journey from plot to plate is far more epic than your supermarket spring onion’s. The Catalans plant them in early autumn, traditionally as the moon is waning, then a few weeks later, when the shoots have pushed up, transplanting them. The following summer they are harvested and stored in a dry place to germinate again, then in August/September they are trimmed and replanted in trenches.

Now the fun starts. Let Colman Andrews, author of the still definitive Catalan Cuisine (1997) take up the story:

“As they begin to sprout once more earth is packed around the new growth to blanch it (as done with chicory and celery) – and this is how calçots got their name, from the verb C, to put on boots or shoes. (The Catalan word for shoe, in fact, is the almost identical calçat. Compare the Italian word calzone, ‘big stocking’, meaning a stocking-shaped turnover pizza).

“By the time the calçots – as many as 12 or 13 of them from each large onion, seven or eight from each smaller one – are harvested in January and the ensuing few months, they have become not only much larger but much milder and sweeter. And because of their ‘shoes’ of soil, at least half their length is white.”

What was once a seaside speciality around Tarragona province, is now commonplace across Spain, as ubiquitous as paella or churros. A colleague noticed Manchester’s acclaimed 10 Tib Lane is currently serving leeks with romesco, saving on the air miles for the real thing.

*Peter an Elaine Kinsella at the Manchester Luna*

In truth the annual La Calçotada wasn’t remotely on mind until a visit to Liverpool this week for the opening of Daniel Heffy’s impressive new restaurant NORD. En route I happened upon the original Lunya restaurant/bar/deli, where founders Peter and Elaine Kinsella retrenched after their Manc exit. And there for sale was a stack of calçots, in all their earthy prime, which I snapped up on impulse, The Kinsellas will be hosting their own Calçotada this Sunday afternoon (March 26) at Lunyalita at Albert Dock, with not just calçots smoking on the grill but also a selection of grilled meatsand yes, the cava will flow. For afters, crema catalana, naturally. My more modest party at the same time may feature fino sherry en rama, my preferred tipple, decidedly un-Catalan. but hey I will, of course, have make my own take on Romesco (recipe below).

I’ll endeavour to char the calçots almost black, wrap them in newspaper as tradition demands.To be topical, I used Times columnist Matthew Parris’ caustic consignment of Boris Johnson to history’s scrap heap. Leave them to steam for 20 minutes, then gingerly peel open the sweet insides from their feathery casing. Serve them simply with lashings of romesco and garlicky tomato bread. The Catalans serve them in long terracotta roofing tiles to keep them warm, but it’s not my priority, obviously.

ROMESCO SAUCE

Ingredients

200g piquillo peppers

6 garlic cloves, unskinned, raosted for 20 minutes

6 plum tomatoes, roasted

100ml sherry vinegar

250ml olive oil

1tsp smoked paprika

50g breadcrumbs

150g blanched almonds

juice of ½ lemon

Method

Toast the almonds in a dry frying pan for 3-4 mins until starting to turn golden and smelling toasted. Shake the pan often to turn them. Tip out and leave to cool, then grind. Roast the tomatoes in the oven until soft and sticky
Drain the red peppers and tip into a food processor with the almonds, breadcrumbs, tomato, lemon, garlic, vinegar and smoked paprika, then blitz to a chunky mixture.
With the motor still on, slowly drizzle in the olive oil to make a coarse sauce. Season well.

25 March 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants

I wrote off The Alan too soon – James Hulme has beefed up the menu magnificently

Meat is Murder, Morrissey’s prescient plant-based message, remains a strident soundtrack to veganism, in harmony now with the methane-blamers in the battle against global warming. And yet to yoke mass-produced, factory-farmed supermarket protein with enlightened sustainable animal husbandry yielding remarkable, healthy produce is a travesty.

Read my piece on the farming practices supplying Higher Ground, in the running to be Manchester’s restaurant standard bearer, then eat there to see what all the fuss is about. At the moment it is just acorn-fed free range pork (I hugely recommend the pig’s head terrine) on the menu. from Jane’s Farm in Cheshire but soon its grass-fed beef will feature too, not a scrap of the animal wasted. Higher Ground is sharing the first Dexter cross carcass with fellow newcomer Climat.

They are not alone in championing beef. These days few retired milkers can look forward to a long retirement, just a few years’ extra grazing to mature their flesh for the grill or pot. At the recent launch of Stock Market Grill – formerly Tom Kerridge’s Bull & Bear –in the Stock Exchange Hotel head chef Joshua Reed-Cooper served us ex-dairy Friesian rib eye steak (substantial, so £55).

Excellent as that rib-eye was, it was trumped at another hotel dining room I’d almost written off after the departure of exec head chef Iain Thomas,who had launched it to acclaim. His permanent replacement at The Alan is James Hulme, as meat savvy as any chef around. When he ran his own restaurant, The Moor, in Heaton Moor he struck up a working relationship with a farm near Buxton, he told us across the chef’s counter.

“I used to take three ewes at a time, drive them to the abattoir. I didn’t kill them myself but I think you should be able to kill stuff if you want to eat it. Many chefs, even at top places, have no idea which part of a cow different cuts come from.”

With such knowledge he embraces the farm to fork ethos, extracting the maximum use of a beast. It took half an hour to prepare our 800g of retired dairy cow, James’s sous chef treating it first to a dose of searing flames. In all its final crimson glory it’s a wonderful mouthful with enough left over for three days of doggie bags for Captain Smidge the chihuahua. £85 the cost, but there’s ample and beyond.

Our little dog was never going to be brought back any of the Pomme Anna style confit beef fat chips – glistening gold slabs of carb crisped in fat from the animal’s beef cap, which also fuels the best beef tartare in the city, lubricated by whipped bone marrow. It’s made distinctive by chopped gherkins and cured egg yolk plus breadcrumbs toasted with beef fat. What else?

The vegan option is never paramount with this chef who honed his talents working for Gordon Ramsay, Jason Atherton, Marco Pierre White, Tom Aikens and our own Aiden Byrne when launching 20 Stories. Still his plant-based offering is better than most. We enjoyed poached and roasted salsify with apple and red wine but, seasonality decreed that was about to depart the menu, its replacement another off the mainstream radar veg, kohlrabi. And, of course, with that fine dining cv, he can’t resist undermining any vegan potential with a dash of life-enhancing butter. Grilled hen of the woods with ancient grains and whey butter is definitely a dish de nos jours.

But easily our favourite among the small plates was again meat-led. My favourite lamb breast dish is the classic French version, Sainte-Menehould. Slow-braised, then strips of it baked with a mustard and breadcrumb coating. This is simpler, the product of pressing with the addition of that most un-Gallic of tracklements – kimchi. The most delicate of kimchis turned into a ketchup.

There’s an improved wine list arriving at The Alan and we suspect this chef will not hesitate to up his menu game, too. For the moment it’s good to see one of the city’s coolest venues consolidating its immediate impact despite big changes.

So many Manchester homages to exposed brick are just plain grubby but this wide open space of muted pastels and cute design quirks really sings. With food to match from James Hulme. Grab a seat at the counter and watch an unsung master at work.

The Alan, 18 Princess Street, Manchester M1 4LG. 01612368999.

21 March 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants

If I’ve got a bone to pick with you let it be Hoppers’ signature marrow varuval

The recent consignment from Swaledale Butchers that brought me my epic St John Haggis also included a quartet of marrow bone canoes – perfect receptacles for another all-time Fergus Henderson classic.

Since my epiphany at his St John Smithfield restaurant 20 years ago I‘ve wolfed molten ox marrow topped with herby crumbs and garlic (pictured above) everywhere from various Hawksmoors to the now vanished Spotted Pig in New York’s West Village, which used to host an annual Fergus-Stock event with its culinary hero in attendance.

The canoes are cut from the the femur and split lengthways through the bone fully exposing the marrow. Less fiddly access and perfect for roasting. Seven minutes in a medium oven will do. Don’t over-cook. A single canoe can accompany a steak, but scooping the ooze out of it with sourdough toast is perhaps the most satisfying approach, raw onion, capers and parsley on the side. In his inimitable prose Fergus suggests: “Lightly chop your parsley, just enough to discipline it.”

So what did I do with my marrowy haul? Went all Sri Lankan instead. Adapted arguably the most popular dish on the menu at the Hoppers group in London. In my Christmas food and drink book recommendations I rated Cynthia Shanmugalingam’s Rambutan as the only Sri Lankan cookbook you need. I’ve ignored my own advice and also acquired the gorgeously produced Hoppers: The Cookbook (Hardie Grant, £30) by its founder Karan Gokani. There on page 256 I discovered Bone Marrow Varuval. High octane spice. Its contents perfect for tipping into the signature hoppers, the fermented rice flour crepes (often served with an egg) namechecked for the brand.

As so often happens, my attempt doesn’t look as gorgeous as the restaurant version but still tasted wonderful (see the sequence below). Without a specialist hopper pan I didn’t risk that element.

BONE MARROW VARUVAL

Ingredients

For the curry: 6 five inch shin bones, split lengthways, 300g red onions, finely sliced, 10 curry leaves, 1 tbsp minced garlic, 1 tsp minced ginger, ½ tsp turmeric, 2 tsp red chilli powder, 1½ tbsp double concentrated tomato paste, 2 green chillies, deseeded and cut in half lengthways, 200ml beef stock, 100ml coconut milk, salt to taste.

Spice paste: 100g freshly grated coconut, 1 tsp fennel seeds, 4 green cardamom pods, 2 tbsp coriander seeds, 4 red chillies, deseeded, ½ tsp cumin seeds, 5 tbsp oil.

Garnish: 2 tbsp oil, 10 curry leaves.

Method

Deep fry the sliced onions for a few minutes, or until golden brown. Drain on kitchen paper. Lay the marrow bones out in a tray and sprinkle a pinch of sea salt over the cut side. Roast for six minutes.

To make the spice paste heat 2 tbsp oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the coconut to it and fry until golden brown. Set aside in a bowl and wipe down the pan.

Heat another tablespoon of oil in the same pan and fry all the remaining ingredients for the spice paste on medium-low heat for 2 minutes. Add them to the coconut and blitz everything to a thick paste, adding a little bit of water.

Heat a wide heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. Add 1 tbsp of oil to it and add the curry leaves, fried onions, ginger and garlic and fry for a couple of minutes, adding a splash of beef stock if it looks dry. Add the turmeric and red chilli powder and fry for 30 seconds. Tip in the tomato paste and green chillies and cook for about 2 minutes. Add the spice paste along with the remaining beef stock and coconut milk. Simmer it all until it reduces to a thick sauce. Season to taste. Transfer the roasted bones to the curry sauce and simmer for 5-8 minutes. Once the bone marrow has finished cooking through, garnish with the fried curry leaves.

Hoppers has three restaurants across London – in Soho, King’s Cross and Marylebone. The latter district is also home to the latest outpost of Fergus Henderson’s St John.

8 February 2023/by Neil Sowerby

Black Friar, Salford – keeping it down to earth

Queen Bee with a red dot, signature vol au vents – it must be Climat

BONE MARROW VARUVAL

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