The Manchester restaurant loved by top chefs
Every time I go to this place there is a top Manchester chef eating there too
I was recently asked by Time Out to add three new restaurants to its best restaurants in Manchester list. It was an excruciating task because their original list was missing probably 10-15 of my favourite restaurants in Greater Manchester. Only being allowed three, I picked the three that were for me, the most glaring omissions from the list. I’m hoping they let me add a few more soon.
One of these was Higher Ground, a restaurant I go back to more than most, even though repeat visits here are quite a bit out of my comfortably affordable zone (that’s more Noodle Alley, to be fair). I go back because the food is not just skillfully cooked and delicious but it’s a masterclass in those buzz words “ethical”, “sustainable” and “locally sourced”.
The vegetarian and vegan options on the menus here are vast and by far the most interesting type of meatless meal you can find in Manchester. There’s no way this place would entertain any of the cardboard-flavoured ultra-processed substitutes that prevail elsewhere. Instead, the squeakiest fresh produce from the HG team’s very own Cinderwood Market Garden sits alongside pulses from English storecupboard supply lovies Hodmedods, house-rolled fresh pasta and spectacular cheeses. Think coal-smoked onions with sunflower seeds and salted blackcurrants; pea fritters; and if you’re veggie, that Pitchfork cheddar tart with cheese in the pastry, the creamy filling and grated like a snowdrift over the top.
Elsewhere, whole animals from farms as close as Cheshire are used in their entirety, not a scrap wasted. This leads to dishes like pasta with offal sauce, pig head terrine with capers, or pig skin chips with green mayo. But it also means huge sharing chops, slow-roasted brisket, and incredible slivers of rare six-week aged rib of beef - like I had on a recent visit. The beef in question had a flavour so intense, like a big inhale of farmland fresh air, and almost gamey that it starkly brought home the difference between this kind of meat and the mass-produced stuff.
Alongside it was a dish I haven’t stopped thinking about since. A potato salad, thickly smeared in wobbly magnolia-coloured mayo, cut through with pickled gooseberries, wild white strawberries and ceps and topped with finely diced tartare of ruby red fillet from the same cow. It’s ironic that a dish of such impeccable sourcing and tender care made me think of a Big Mac but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was an intentionally playful influence in the flavour profile. It was stupendous.
The above beef dishes were part of an event in collaboration with equally hip London restaurant Perilla. All fostered by a punk rock mentality that seems to prevail among modern, sustainably minded chefs. Rather than cast a moody side eye and see others as bitter competition, proper chefs see others as inspiration, motivation and collaboration to the end that everyone is striving for: better sourced, considerate, delicious food. I love seeing collabs like this. It’s something Higher Ground does really well and I would be pleased to see more cross-pollination across Manchester restaurants as well as those from London and other cities.
Collabs like this are a great opportunity for Mancs to get a taste of what’s happening outside of our own egos without the expense of a trip to London or elsewhere. This is probably why the Chef-Proprietor of one of the other three restaurants I added to Time Out’s list was dining at this event too. Yet another top chef had DMed me saying he was gutted he hadn’t been able to go. The last couple of times I visited Higher Ground I said hi to some of Manchester’s top brewers, some of the snobbiest food critics I know, and yet more highly acclaimed chefs all gleefully tucking in. It speaks volumes.
Another time, I’d like to talk about the wine at Higher Ground, presided over by Daniel and his co-pilot Ana, the same amount of care is put into what lines the walls of the dedicated wine room at HG as goes into the food. Yes, it’s focused on natural, low intervention and biodynamic growers, and that probably means some drops won’t suit some people, but I have had some stunning wines here. Subscribe to my wine blog to read about a couple of them from my recent visit when I publish a round-up of what I drank in August - it’s my birthday month so I’ve gone hard. I’m hoping to do some spotlight articles on local wine people for this blog in the future too.
With several dishes already feeling like they will go down as Manchester food classics, and everyone who knows anything about food queuing up to dine there, this is one of the most exciting places to eat in the city right now. If you’ve not been to Higher Ground yet, I can’t recommend it more.