Three good things I ate and drank in Manchester in June
A serious cocktail, a silly pie and a superb salad.
Every month, I plan to recap some of the best things I ate and drank that month in and around Manchester that I urge to you try. I’ve already written about Cafe San Juan’s deep-fried red snapper and Bar San Juan’s billy big bollock pinchos, and I was also lucky enough to eat a flaming wheelbarrow steak (amongst other things) in the Douro Valley in June.
Read on for two standout dishes and a drink from my June eating around Manchester.
Negroni Primavera at The Jane Eyre (£11)
Fresh herbs are one of my favourite things. I remember discovering their witchcraft as a teenager, they make any dish sing. My current favourites are dill and coriander but basil has always been a strong fave too. The difference between a jar of pesto and one you have whizzed up yourself from fresh bunches of heady basil is huge. I also love herbs in drinks. So whenever I have option paralysis from a cocktail menu, any with herbs in them usually budge to the front off the queue.
There are a lot of ‘best cocktail bar’ lists around and The Jane Eyre often gets overlooked but I’ve had extremely good drinks at both the new Chorlton Jane Eyre and the OG in Ancoats recently. It’s one of my top five places for cocktails in Manchester. Hard proof is this Negroni Primavera. Negroni has been my gal for years now (it’s bitter like me) and I don’t think there’s a need to mess with the classic recipe too much but the addition of basil gin in this one brought a rounded note of freshness that I absolutely loved. If you’re a bit of a Herbie Hancock like me, give it a whirl.
Croissant crust bone marrow pie at Hawksmoor
I’ve been lucky enough to eat in Hawksmoor for free a few times recently because of my job as a food writer. I know this is a huge privilege and I want to be transparent that this pie was part of an invited lunch to promote their new menu. I don’t generally want to write about food I haven’t paid for myself in this blog because I think there are too many people out there who will use up all their superlatives in return for free food and/or payment. I think the influencer culture is complex. There are people making really great content that of course deserve to be paid for their brilliant work but there are also a whole load of people who shamelessly DM restaurants asking for freebies to fill their Insta feed with. I think it’s important to be discerning and it’s easy to have your judgement coloured when you are being buttered up by PRs, as lovely as that can be.
Disclaimer aside, I still can’t stop thinking about this ridiculous pie. Slow-cooked beef stew made even more unctuous by the addition of a huge jutting marrow-filled bone (fnar). This is the kind of rich lunch dish that will negate any need for tea later so even though it’s a bit spenny, it does the work. As if it wasn’t rich enough, the chefs have created a crust made from croissant dough - surely the best dough ever invented. All you need on the side is a bit of lettuce, if anything, and a glass of Rioja.
Salad plate at The Firehouse (£10)
If you dismiss Ramona and its sister venue The Firehouse as party bars, you’re missing out on some of the best food in Manchester. Yes, if you go at weekends, you’ll struggle to have a conversation over the loud DJs but head down midweek, ideally around lunchtime, and get stuck into the Firehouse’s incredible chicken, pillowy pitas and mezze-style small plates. I absolutely love this style of eating, tearing up bread and dipping it into colourful mounds of hummus or labneh. Loads of fresh salads and a nice big hunk of protein - they do creamy, golden hunks of halloumi too.
On Fridays throughout summer, The Firehouse has got a £10 salad plate on and I implore you to treat yourself to one for a Friday lunch. You get a pick and mix of their mezze dips including a lovely new beetroot borani, a mound of barley in a herby, spicy dressing, pickled carrots, a herb salad, a lightly crisped flatbread and either their famous peri peri chicken or the aforementioned halloumi. I added a plate of celeriac slaw on the side but that was unnecessary greed on my part. It’s quite possible the perfect self-contained lunch and not all that much more than a Go Falafel.