Major openings bring the English city real culinary swagger.
(Bloomberg) — Over the centuries, Manchester has been famed for many things: as the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution (once known as “Cottonopolis”) and more recently for two great football clubs—United and City—and its “Madchester” 1980s rave culture focused around the legendary Hacienda nightclub.
Manchester is in the spotlight again. It’s become a better place than London to look for employment in the UK, according to a recent jobs report from Bloomberg Reed. It can also lay claim to being the sole UK city to land on National Geographic’s Best of the World 2023 list.
Among new attractions are the reopening of the Manchester Museum after a £15 million ($18.3 million) refurbishment; the opening of Factory International, a permanent £211 million home for the acclaimed Manchester International Festival, whose next biennial opening will come in June; and the new Castleford Viaduct, an urban park modeled on New York’s High Line.
Food has never held the spotlight in Manchester; the social scene revolves around clubs and bars. Now a culinary regeneration that’s a heady blend of classic and modern is taking over. Its epicenter is the historic Square Half Mile, the former financial hub. Many banks and accounting establishments—Barclays Bank, Bank of New York Mellon and RBC Brewin Dolphin, to name a few—have relocated nearby, to lofty spaces in the new Spinningfields development, and several of the district’s imposing office buildings now host bars and restaurants.
One is the Stock Exchange Hotel in the district’s heart, co-owned by Manchester United soccer legends Phil Neville and Ryan Giggs. The Stock Market Grill, its splendidly ornate, Edwardian Baroque dining room, opened in late February.
A few blocks west, the £3.5 million modern Japanese restaurant Musu is the brainchild of Vincent Braine and Marius Kamara, a pair of Mancunians who cut their teeth in the bar and club scene. “There’s a younger crowd now who are educated in food and with money to spend,” Braine says. “And the new business districts of MediaCityUK [home to the BBC and ITV Granada, among others] and Spinningfields, right on our doorstep, are full of people with clients to impress.”
Musu is a prime example of the city’s newfound culinary swagger sustained by hungry locals and record numbers of visitors—including 1.7 million international guests annually, a figure surpassed only by London and Edinburgh. Here are the top places to enjoy Manchester’s revival.
The Stock Market Grill
Chef Joshua Reed-Cooper helms this distinctly British brasserie in a handsome, high-ceilinged room that contained a busy trading floor a century ago. It’s the first restaurant from Joe and Daniel Schofield, brothers born and bred in Manchester; they already run a string of upmarket bars, including Sterling in the Stock Exchange Hotel’s basement. Reed-Cooper’s menu offers spruced-up versions of such British classics as hand-raised pork pies with English mustard, Cullen skink (a kind of Scottish chowder) with mussels and lovage, and lamb chops with caper sauce, which go for £29. Don’t miss the fat chips fried in beef dripping.
Musu
Pass a sleek bar with plush, jade-green booths and a list of Japanese-inspired cocktails (shiso-infused gin with blueberry, lychee and Champagne is a winner) and then take a table by the gleaming, open kitchen, where head chef Mike Shaw creates skillful, thoughtful kaiseki menus that start at £110. There’s impeccable sashimi of red sea bream and aged akami tuna; red shrimp in featherlight tempura; and rosy duck breast with plump gyoza and beetroot curls. Pair them with a subtle, aromatic glass of Kayagatake, made from Japan’s indigenous koshu grape, or with one of a half-dozen top-notch sakes.
The Spärrows
Spätzle is the specialty at the Spärrows, a tiny Alpine-accented restaurant incongruously tucked into an old railway arch on Mirabel Street. Ask for your egg noodles to be sauced with guanciale or with Swiss cheese and braised onions, or go full-throttle après-ski with Tyrolese goulash, spätzle and pickles (£17.50). Polish, Swiss and German wines star on a terrific drinks list that also offers grappa, eau de vie and schnapps.
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Mana
Michelin-starred Mana is the domain of ex-Noma chef Simon Martin, and you’ll find major Scandinavian influences throughout. A choice of set menus (£95 and £195) at lunch and dinner show off the chef’s precise, multilayered cooking. Langoustines are accented with cured egg yolk and spruce, and venison salami is served with attention-getting cauliflower fungus. Tables in the lofty dining room are well spaced, and all face Martin’s open kitchen.
Erst
Erst is the kind of industrial-chic, small-plates wine bar that wouldn’t seem out of place in Shoreditch, London, or Brooklyn, New York. Scorched, pillowy flatbreads are a specialty, perhaps slathered with beef fat and Turkish chili flakes or simply anointed with whipped lardo. Ingredients are impeccably sourced: charcuterie from Cobble Lane, anchovies from Cantabria, oysters from Carlingford Lough. Plates, with prices ranging from about £4 to £18, are designed to go with the list of mostly natural wines on a concise, constantly rotating list; a dozen or so are offered by the glass.
Adam Reid at the French
Adam Reid has been cooking for a decade at the French, a gloriously over-the-top, belle epoque restaurant in the historic Midland hotel, but the place still feels fresh. A noticeably down-to-earth accent attends the £125 menu: “A warm Northern welcome” is a combination of malt bread, beef butter and broth, while “Today’s tea” might include loin of shorthorn beef from the nearby Lake District paired with garlic gravy and beet root. Dessert, or “Afters,” might be baked English custard with Yorkshire rhubarb. The dishes, finished at table side by the chefs, are infinitely more refined than the homespun descriptions might suggest.
El Gato Negro
Simon Shaw is one of the major players in Manchester’s restaurant scene. His stylish, affordable tapas joint, spread over three floors of a beautifully converted townhouse on King Street, has for seven years been pulling in a lively, cosmopolitan crowd. Crisp salt cod croquetas come with piquillo pepper purée and aïoli; octopus is char-grilled and paired with new potatoes and capers (£14); and churros are dusted with cinnamon, ready for the chocolate toffee sauce that accompanies. The first floor is designed for grazing and drinking and the second floor for dining; head to the upstairs terrace when weather permits.
Three Little Words
Located inside the six mighty brick arches of the Spirit of Manchester distillery, Three Little Words is the chic spot for imaginative, well-crafted cocktails. Behind the marble bar, expert drinkmakers are ready to mix Silver Linings (apple spirit, flax seed vodka, clarified lemon and orange blossom bitters, for £12), or Above Board (mezcal, yellow chartreuse and olive bitters, £13). A menu of small plates stocks addictive bacon sausage rolls and moules marinières to accompany the beverages.
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