Nine good things I ate in October (and some bad things)
An olive oil cake, a hypocritical crustacean and two pizzas
Firstly, apologies that this is a bit later than promised, I got carried away writing about Cantaloupe opening in Stockport and ran out of writing time over the weekend.
I’ve been writing about the food and drink I love in Manchester in this newsletter (and my wine one) for well over a year now and I worry I don’t do enough for my paid subscribers. Paid subscriptions help keep me motivated to write. It takes a lot of time and energy to keep this substack going and I want to keep doing it but the time spent on this - largely unpaid - work takes away time and energy from other bill-paying work. There needs to be a balance. Huge thanks to my paid subscribers, you are a godsend, honestly.
I have plans to write more free-to-read features like the recent one on Cantaloupe (which was not a PR comp btw) but to keep them up, I could do with a few more paid subscribers. So I have decided to test out making these monthly ‘best dishes’ round-ups partly for paid subs only.
You will be able to read the whole thing this month, but I’m looking at part-paywalling the ‘good things I ate’ roundups from next month. A subscription is just £3.50 a month - less than a cup of coffee and the more paid subs I have the more I can do for you. If this move boosts paid subscribers, I will be able to allocate more time to writing features that everyone can read for free too. Whether you are a free or paid subscriber, you reading this means the world to me, so thank you.
To whet your whistle, behind the paywall this month are some notes on things I really didn’t enjoy eating and drinking recently. I’m testing out the idea of doing this, very tentatively. Eek.
Read on for a few of the best things I ate and drank in October:
Lemon cake with olive oil from Companio NQ
I’ve long loved Companio’s tiny bakery in Ancoats and maybe you have too. If you’ve not stumbled across their new, bigger, eat-in bakery in the NQ then please add it to your coffee shop list. It’s not exactly easy to stumble across, around the back of the old Bakerie/Pie & Ale site on a graffitied backstreet (very NQ-chic). It’s a serene refuge to sit and people-watch with a fantastic coffee and a piece of cake. I was hooked in by pictures of this one on their Instagram. It’s a slice of lemon-drenched sponge topped with whipped cream and a pool of Honest Toil olive oil (my favourite). I don’t eat much cake so when I do, it has to be special. This was.
Nutmeg custard tart, creme and candied orange at Maya (£8)
I went to Maya a month or so ago and though the food was fine, it didn’t blow me away. It didn’t make it into my dishes of the month and I didn’t think I would be back again this year. But a couple of weeks later, bombshell! MFDF chef of the year 2023 Shaun Moffat announced he was leaving the Edinburgh Castle in Ancoats and taking his skills to Maya. Even weirder, a few weeks later, Maya’s former chef Gabe Lea announced he was going to be running the EC kitchen. Not a job swap I had on my Manchester hospitality bingo card.
I went back to Maya thanks to a kind PR invite, feeling a little anxious. I have been a big fan of Shaun’s cooking and ethos ever since interviewing him for Manchester’s Finest a few years ago. I always worry when I have high expectations, especially when there are genuinely lovely people involved, but I needn’t have. Shaun’s done a great job of overhauling the menu while keeping things in line with what I would imagine existing Maya customers want. The food is as generous as it was at EC, if not more so, but with a few more fine-dining fandangos. I loved it and I’m looking forward to seeing how it evolves.
Everything we ate was very good but the thing I can’t stop thinking about is this indecent custard tart. It ticked all my dessert boxes: faultless pastry, a custard filling as smooth talking as your French exchange penpal’s older brother, and nutmeg, I never say no to nutmeg. Try your best to leave room for this even if you have to share.
Vietnamese prawn salad at Dzo Viet Kitchen, Islington, London (£10.90)
Anyone who’s ever been in a band will tell you that being on tour and eating well generally don’t go hand in hand. You live off non-perishable foods and whatever is the least financially crippling item you can find in a service station. As an energetic singer, the same rules apply to playing gigs as to exercising: no meals less than 2 hours before the show to prevent yourself from getting a stitch or worse, vomiting over the front row. I don’t like to eat late so if we’re on stage at 8:30, soundchecking at 6, it often means skipping dinner.
I can recall in vivid detail the times I have sat down somewhere nice and eaten something wholesome when playing a show in London. This was one of them. The timings for stage and soundcheck aligned with the proximity of affordable good food and the three of us sat down together for a beautiful pre-show dinner at Dzo, a great Vietnamese spot on Upper St. This spicy shredded salad was packed with prawns and ticked both the flavour and nutrient boxes we needed to play an absolute blinder at the legendary Hope & Anchor down the road. This place also does a cracking banh mi and traditional Vietnamese coffee, as enjoyed by drummer Steve who played 10% better as a result.
Wanna read about the wine I have been drinking all year?
Langoustine, monkfish and mussel bouillabaisse with rouille at Tartuffe (part of a £40 supper club for Eat Well MCR)
Manchester’s food and drink goings on can be overwhelming. With people gushing all over your socials urging you to try the next big thing. So much of it is ‘hashtag gifted’ that half the time you don’t know what’s actually good and what’s “I gave a free meal to 100 people with the latest iPhones” good. I’m one of them sometimes. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. But I say no to a lot of invites too.
I took Tartuffe up on this freebie for two reasons: 1/ I’d been before on my own dollar and loved what I ate, and 2/ This was a supper club offering a portion of profits to Eat Well MCR so I promised to donate to the charity as part compensation for the meal. Not to be a virtue signaller but I also left a cash tip, as I always do, especially when I have been ‘hashtag gifted’. I recently saw a ‘content creator’ complaining on social media that they had been asked to leave a nominal service charge for a complimentary meal. Always tip your server, folks, or you’re a bit of a nob.
As regular readers (and PRs) know, a freebie does not guarantee coverage anywhere from me. But Tartuffe is bloody fantastic. It’s normally hidden away in a stylish, hidden, bar called Side Street in the ABC building. On this occasion, we ate at the bungalow on stilts in Kampus. It was a supper-club-style set menu and this monkfish, mussel and langoustine dish with a spotless bouillabaisse was the star of the show for me. Chef Gary Weir has Simon Rimmer’s Earle and Escape to Freight Island on his CV but it’s clearly his time to shine. The main event at Tartuffe (named after Moliere’s hypocritical villain btw) is a sexy (pole dancing) roast chicken which was served with a chouette tartiflette at this event. It’s disarmingly simple but very much worth your time.
If you would like to donate to Eat Well MCR which provides meals for people facing food insecurity in Greater Manchester, you can do so here.
Spiced lamb pizza at Caravan (£14)
I’ve just added Caravan to my Manchester Wine Tours for its small but excellent selection of New Zealand wines. But this visit was a personal one, for much-needed sustenance before attending the music conference Beyond The Music at the nearby Aviva Studios/Factory International.
The pizzas are really good here, a bit crisper than the floppy boys Manchester is awash with but not so crunchy that they hurt your mouth. Just right. This one with minced lamb, spicy green zhoug, crème fraiche, cumin, mozzarella and parmesan was the favourite of the member of staff who served us so we followed his advice - good taste he has too. Substantial, spicy and a bit different.
Tuna hash browns, fermented chilli at Maya (£8)
I’ve mentioned before that one of my favourite things in the world to eat is raw fish. You’ve already won me over if you have it on the menu (oh, except that one place everyone raves about that I went to twice and didn’t enjoy either time because they put about three times too many seasonings on their raw fish dishes, drowning out their delicate flavour).
I digress, Shaun Moffat seems to have paged Julie Andrews for a list of my favourite things here and turned it into a perfect snack. There is raw tuna, crisp potato (potato is the best carb, no contest, don’t @ me), a waft of horseradish and a fermented chilli sauce the colour of my favourite lipstick. IMO everything is improved by adding something fermented and almost everything is improved by adding chilli. I would fight all the drag queens brandishing free drinks flyers on Canal Street to get to this. And I’m an (LGBTQ+) lover not a fighter.
New Yorker Irish bagel at Giovannis’ Cafe (£7.95)
I was gonna say you’ll never see the influencers getting all giddy about Giovanni’s cafe - no, not the newly revamped Don Giovanni, all the influencers were at that launch - the Manc-as-it-comes greasy spoon next to Higher Ground on New York Street. Then I had a look at their Instagram for the first time ever and the most recent three posts are collabs with influencers (including Liam Marley who tbf is a fave of mine cos he goes to loads of places nobody else does and he’s absolutely lovely). So that’s me told.
Well, I promise, I went in for a meeting over couple of brews one morning, completely unrelated to my food and drink writing career and not on any kind of invited visit. I fancied a ‘small bite to eat’ and this behemoth arrived: a ridiculous tower of salty, meaty trouble (white pudding, black pudding, sausage, Guinness cured bacon, cheese, and a runny egg) and it was exactly what my growling belly needed. Shout out to the poor napkin underneath which was no match for grease and runny egg.
La Carbonara pizza from Double Zero (£13.50)
I wouldn’t normally include two pizzas in my dishes of the month but October food has to be carby and comforting and frankly, they both deserve a mention. Pizza is my ‘junk’ food of choice. Give me a blistered crust and a carb coma over the guilty meat sweat of a greasy burger any day. Yes, I know I have put burgers in these round-ups before but, gun to my head? Pizza.
Double Zero has been open in town for a while but it’s taken me some time to pop into the new gaff. A post-swim, post-nails Monday with an admin-heavy afternoon ahead and an empty stomach found me pulling up a seat at a table pour un. Carbonara pizza was a no brainer. Who doesn’t want guanciale, egg yolk, and parmesan on a doughy crust for lunch? The lack of tomato base required a generous side dish of tomato salad for balance, and look how perfect the combo is. Try it.
Omelette roti wrap from Chaiiwala (£3.50)
The second of this month’s bargain priced breakfasts is this temptress from ChaiiWalla aka the Indian Greggs. I walk past it on the way back from my morning swim several times a week, sometime popping in for a takeaway chai. On this occasion, I had my laptop with me for a spot of ‘get me out of the damn house’ admin so I took a chance on a £3.50 omelette roti. Flaky roti wrapped around an omelette spruced up with tomato, green chilli and mozzarella cheese. Spot on, honestly.