Fifteen good things I ate in Manchester and London in September
Stuffed squid, Cornish skate, monkfish curry and more
How I don’t have gout yet, I have no idea. Looking back over September’s food photos, I haven’t let up on the ole gluttony. I do balance it - as followers of my Instagram account will see - with more humble stuff, but this month I have eaten almost too well.
This month’s round-up of best dishes is also a little late because the past two weeks have been relentlessly busy as I launched my new business: Manchester Wine Tours. I imagine you’ve probably seen my posts about it but if not, it’s essentially an itinerant wine-tasting (with me as host) calling at four different venues each time, tasting six wines with some god-tier snacks to keep you going. It’s a lot of fun. I’d love you to come and see for yourself, and because you already support me loads by subscribing and reading my ramblings, I want to give you a discount. Use the code IWANTTODRINKTHAT for a nice chunk off the price of a tour. The next one is on October 22.
Substack is telling me this article is too long for email (that’s my middle name) so make sure you click through the read the whole thing.
Here are some of the best things I ate and drank in September.
Cornish skate, mussels, potatoes and roast peppers from Tawny Stores at Yellowhammer Stockport (£14)
It took me longer than intended to get down to Yellowhammer on one of Beth from Tawny Stores’ evenings. Partly because I wanted to visit sooner and didn’t get a chance, and partly because the trains were off so instead of a 10-minute train ride it was a good hour stood up on a packed 192. It was well worth the effort though. This dish in particular took me aback. I’m in two minds about skate, I’ve had a few lately which were too ammonia-stinky so I nearly didn’t order it. That would have been a big mistake because it’s one of the best things I have eaten this year. All that lightly cooked fish and veg was piled on top of a garlic-heady aioli rendering me totally unkissable but absolutely not arsed. You know me, I’d marry a bit of seafood anyway. It’s rare I don’t have the words to describe food but this dish is beyond them. Just go and eat here and thank me later.
Rainbow dumplings from Wong Dumplings at GRUB (£6.50 for four)
A good dumpling is a beautiful thing. Every culture has them and the possibilities for experimenting with them are as endless as those of pies and pasta. Wong are not only playing with interesting fillings like hoisin duck, kimchi, and spicy black pepper pork but they have cleverly colour-coded theirs so that a) they know at a glance what’s in them and b) they look extremely pretty. Practicality x creativity = a win for me.
I ate these at a Voice ESEA event at GRUB celebrating East and South East Asian culture, food, art, and more for ESEA Heritage Month (that’s every September btw). The good news is, you can now get them at Kargo MKT the new food hall at Salford Quays I mentioned in my recent Manchester food news round-up.
Salt beef beigel at Beigel Bake Shoreditch London (£6.20)
One of the best value meals you can get in London. You know how much I love Jewish food, and I never pass up the opportunity to stuff my face with a salt beef beigel (or bagel) from Beigel Bake on Brick Lane in Shoreditch. I found myself a three-minute walk away when playing the brilliant Loud Women Fest with my band The Empty Page and that voracious post-show hunger had me making haste there shortly after we came off stage. FYI I also bought 18 bagels and a loaf of black bread to take home for the freezer - and you should do the same.
Stuffed squid and chorizo at Noble Rot Mayfair London (£16)
I should go to more places for wine in London but I always get sucked into Noble Rot like muscle memory making me open an addictive app without thinking. This time I had an Xmas voucher to spend before it ran out so I took a punt on the new Mayfair branch. Wealthy old clean-streeted Mayfair is not my natural habitat. Credit to Noble Rot that nobody there seemed to notice. We sat eavesdropping on conversations between the rich and important people all around us while we shared dishes like this stunningly simple stuffed squid in its cashmere pashmina of a chorizo sauce as slowly as possibly so as to extend the pleasure for as long as we could. I can’t afford the blackboard BTG list but I love to read it and weep. Even if you don’t care much for wine, the food here is absolute perfection.
Fried curry of monkfish and its liver at Kiln Soho London (£18)
Ottolenghi and Noble Rot are hard to beat but it’s Kiln in Soho that I keep reliving. Swivelling on a bar stool facing the open kitchen, it looks like something from Lord of the Rings with its flaming ‘hobs’ of all different shapes and sizes, pans flinging all over the show by sweaty bearded blokes. Needless to say, it’s Nelly-grade hot in there. The flames almost singe your eyebrows, the intensity of the kitchen, the speed at which they want you in and out (you can’t book so there’s an impatient queue at all times) and the searing spice of Thai birds eye chillies. God I love it. It’s also unbelievably fair priced. We ate seven dishes and had a couple of drinks each and it came in at only just over a ton with service. Genuinely everything we ate had my face flicking through all the open mouthed emojis but this lime-leaf fragrant monkfish curry was the GOAT. Is that salty liquid streaming down my face sweat, tears or enthusiastic saliva? Probably all three.
Vault City Raspberry Blueberry Bubblegum Bottles Pastry Session Sour (Approx £5 per 2/3)
Who can resist a beer inspired by slush puppies? If you’re a fan of sours, this raspberry bubblegum version that paints your tongue bright blue is a lot of fun on a sunny day. I tried this at the aforementioned Voice ESEA event at GRUB but you can get it by the can and on tap at various places.
Keema Per Eedu at Dishoom Manchester (£14.90)
The words “curry for breakfast” elicit different responses from different types, and fair enough if it’s not for you but I would at least urge you to try it if you never have. Of course it’s the norm in much of Asia and I think it should be more enabled in Manchester given the wealth of Indian subcontinent originating people and food there is here. Dishoom is known for its Anglo-Indian bacon and egg naan but my money is on the keema per eedu, a deep bowl of spicy chicken mince and chunky chicken liver topped with confident-yolked fried eggs and spicy chip sticks with two buttery brioche-style buns on the side. Way more interesting than a fry up.
Seared ox tongue with burnt butter hummus, wild garlic peppers and ladopita at NOPI by Ottolenghi Soho London (£18.50)
I can’t bypass ox tongue on a menu when I see it, so at Ottolenghi’s NOPI in Soho, this was a dead cert. The dish had all the hallmarks of Otto, a variation on hummus, something veggie and pickley, and a type of bread I had to Google even though I think of myself as something of an expert on carbs. Topped with Chesterfield-coloured slivers of the tenderest of bovine meat, it’s clear why Yotam’s everyone’s fave.
Kro fish platter at Kro Bar Manchester (£11.95)
That outrageous week of sunshine in early September had me in maximum skive mode. If at all possible, I have to take the opportunity to soak in those rays when they appear in a desperate attempt to get enough charge in my SAD battery to see me til at least Halloween. After a quick green bath in Whitworth Park, it was beer o clock and Kro Bar’s backstage beer garden beckoned. On such an ice-in-your-cider kinda day, all I wanted was chilly food. Enter Kro’s legendary fish platter. Ostentatious crockery: check. Two types of herring: check. Fucking caviar in a student bar: er, check. Scandi food in Manchester is scarcer than a Bergslagen sideboard and cheap and cheerful Kro is not to be sniffed at. Especially on a sunny day.
Rainbow cake from Wong Wong Chinatown Manchester (£3.50)
God save Wong Wong and all who sail in her. Where else can you get a lovingly crafted, meringue-light, pristine slice of rainbow cake topped with fresh fruit for under a fiver? Full disclosure, this was eaten on 31 August but we’re letting it slide in because, just look at it. Thanks to Deanna for buying it for me cos I had no cash.
Pot roast chicken, bacon and pea pie with mash and gravy at Great North Pie Co Kampus (£12)
Pie season is upon us and this is the season in which I shine. Autumn is flame coloured trees, snuggly jumpers - and steaming hot pies. Manchester does a lot of good ones but my death row pie dinner would be a GNPC one with their over-generous fillings that go right up to the lid (unlike many). I’ve been a fan for a very long time, having bought them from Neil to take home from an artisan market in Castlefield probably a decade ago and stuffed my face on them many times at Alty Market, but it took me this long (and a marathon wine tasting) to get to the Kampus one. Nothing soaks up your inability to spit out all the wine better. V affordable too.
As always, for full disclosure, the items below were all very kindly gifted to me but they are only included here because I genuinely loved them.
Montagne St Desire cheese via George and Joseph Leeds at Yorkshire Wine School (Wine tastings from £27.50)
Yorkshire Wine School owner Laura Kent is one of the people who has taught me the most about wine. She’s terrifyingly knowledgeable, more connected than the national grid and can (and does) drink me under the table before lunchtime. I’ve written before about her wine lock up of dreams but her tastings also come furnished with some of the best cheese I’ve ever tasted. After a day of teaching for YWS, Laura invited me to stay for a Vins De Bourgogne tasting, an honour in itself, but when she casually unwrapped this cheese everyone in the room got down on one knee. What a buttery belter. When I quizzed Laura later about the cheese, she said her cheesemonger George and Joseph had sourced this one from Beaune in Burgundy especially for her. Told you, connections. I’m reliably informed G&J now ship nationwide.
Slow roasted Iberico pork cheeks in red wine sauce at Northern Wine School (£40 as part of a Granada wine tasting)
There are not one but two wine schools in Manchester, the one I work for Manchester Wine School and also Northern Wine School - both excellent. Given the setting for this tasting, you might be forgiven for wondering if climate change had created a new wine region in the North West called Granada but we’re not quite there yet. These wines came from the other Granada, the one in southern Spain. Led by the erudite Jason Lee Sheldon, I thoroughly enjoyed trying wines from a region I had little experience of. They were all matched with appropriate snacks from the much missed Abeja Tapas that used to be my go to for food at Hatch. More on the wines on my wine blog when I get around to writing about them. This might not be the prettiest dish but melting Iberico pork cheeks and a glass of deep, blackcurranty red wine is a stunning combo. Keep an eye on Abeja’s Instagram for details of upcoming tastings, the next is on 21 October.
Halibut with cauliflower, dashi butter sauce and oyster leaf at Musu (part of a £55 three-course tasting menu)
Another first for me, Musu is at the higher end of the price scale in Manchester and I frankly couldn’t afford it when I left my full-time job. So I felt very lucky to be invited to a press preview of the new Xmas menu. Japanese food cooked by a bloke from Oldham seems… incongruous, but Patron Michael Shaw has certainly put in some hard yards to learn about the cuisine and is highly respected at the more starched end of the tablecloth having worked at some top London places including for my, er, old pal Gordon Ramsay. The lunch was as you might expect from a restaurant of this stature. Elegant, precise, absolutely delicious and left plenty of room for a pie for my tea later. This dish was a standout and gave Noble Rot Mayfair a run for its money.
Mango Lassi Dazzler Pale Ale at Bundobust (£5 for 2/3)
I was invited to try the very short-lived Oktoberfest menu at Bundobust and would like to campaign to have the mung and sauerkraut fritters added to the menu permanently, please. That said, I don’t write about things you can’t get your hands on (if I can help it) so instead I am going to wax lyrical about this lovely remix of one of my fave beers Northern Monk’s Bombay Dazzler into a bright, shiny mango lassi pale. This one’s still on the menu and this is your sign to try it.
All images by Kelly Bishop