Ten good things I ate and drank in Manchester in August

Meaty trumpets, pointy cabbage and a Negroni with lager in it

August is my birthday month and as a shameless epicurean, I use it as another excuse to eat and drink as much as possible all month. Life is short and often cruel. Grab pleasure where you can, I say.

This month, I went back to a couple of my favourite restaurants and discovered a couple of new places. What’s really interesting is that this is my first month untethered to a media publication as I am now freelance. Birthday aside, you’d think I’d get to eat out less when not working full time in food media but I have eaten out more, been invited to more events (that I was able to say yes to), and been out and about in the world in general so much more than I have for at least the past six months at least. I’ve been invited on many adventures including lunch on a cruise ship parked in the Thames with the Guild of Food Writers. I even got married, three times. It’s inspiring for a writer to be out and about. That’s where you find great stories. I’ve also been finding my feet but I’m very excited about the future. Long may this season of adventure continue.

If you want to know about the best wine I’ve tasted recently, that has its own article now. Subscribe to my wine blog for August’s best wines and lots of other wine content incoming.

Read on for the best things I ate and drank (cocktails, beer etc.) this month.

BBQ pointed cabbage, summer vegetables and dashi - Climat (£14.50)

Oh come on Kel, don’t tell me the best thing you ate on your birthday at Paris-inspired, buttery as Burgundy rooftop restaurant Climat was a wedge of effing cabbage. Well ner, it was, so there. Yes, we had a spectacular bit of cod with langoustine sauce sauce fragrant with lemon verbena. Yes, we had hogget the colour of a Chesterfield sofa, seared and sliced and sexy. Yes, we had those levelled-up hash browns with cod roe (may they never leave the menu). But the dish that made us both look up from our plates to catch the same giddy joy in each other’s eyes - was a wedge of cabbage. It was bathing in a luxurious buttery dashi broth fit for Liz Taylor to soak her toes in. It was zippy with lemon zest and getting friendly with a load of great, fat butter beans. It was offset by purple, fruity beetroot. It had been given a good seeing to by the charcoal grill. Sure, it wasn’t just some cabbage. But eat this and then tell me meat-free food is joyless. You can’t.

Potato salad with beef tartare - Higher Ground (Part of a £59 tasting menu)

I took my dad on a date to Higher Ground as a late birthday celebration for us both. London restaurant Perilla had popped in to do a Sunday lunch event. I’ve already written at length about Higher Ground and this event but I make the rules here and if I want to go on a bit more about it, I bloody well will. 

When I was a young teen just discovering boys, I used to go on holiday, see a boy I fancied from afar, never talk to him and then think about how beautiful he was for months afterwards while gazing out of the classroom window during double science. This is how I’ve been feeling about this potato salad ever since we met. There were lots of other good things on the table and lots of other good things already sloshing around in our bellies by this point but the potato salad stared deep into my eyes and my knees gave way. Mayonnaise the colour and consistency of thick Jersey cream, pickled salted gooseberries, tiny, wild white strawberries like something they’d serve at a witches’ banquet in the woods, pickled ceps with the essence of those woods within them, all topped with diced beef tartare the colour of my favourite lipstick. Posh, yes, but still with a whisper of the Hamburglar about it. I’d fail science for this.

Big fat stuffed ravioli of Devon crab - Quality Chop, London (£28)

It’s entirely possible to zip to London and back on the train from Manchester taking in lunch on a cruise ship, a look at the Rosettis exhibition at Tate Britain and dinner at one of the capital’s myriad great places to eat. I know, cos that’s what I did in early August. Quality Chop was the dinner of choice for me and my old pal, travel writer Vicky Smith. I TikToked about the ginormous monkfish liver we ate as a starter but the dish that really sticks in my memory is this, the most generously filled ravioli I’ve ever had the pleasure of. Three overstuffed throw cushions bulging with sweet Devon crab and dressed in creamy bisque finished with skinned and finely diced tomato, grassy-fresh lovage and a handful of soft herbs. Oh, and it’s all served on your grandma’s chintziest crockery. I skipped the wine for once and enjoyed it with a gooseberry sour. You can totally sense the influence from places like this up in Manchester at the moment.

Watalapam tart - Little Sri Lankan (part of a £40 supper club)

I had been meaning to get to one of the Little Sri Lankan supper clubs for ages and finally made it. This one was at the super cool Sureshot Brewery tap just round the back of Piccadilly Station. It’s good for a visit any time it’s open but certainly when Malanie and Michael are bringing the scran. Malanie’s Sri Lankan heritage and her partner Michael’s kitchen skills make for a unique and generous supper club all full of love, good vibes and super spicy chillies. My pescatarian friend Kat and me enjoyed every dish that was put in front of us and paired them with Sureshot’s brilliantly named beers like Small Man’s Wetsuit and His Name Is Wodders. This dessert was a fantastic end to a thriller of a meal. Watapalam loosely translates as cupcake but this Sri Lankan-Malay dish has been reinvented by Mal and Mike into a shortcrust pastry case filled with coconut and cashew cream spiced with nutmeg, cardamom and cloves. It got me feeling Xmassy in the middle of summer. 

Fake lox bagel at Manchester Jewish Museum (about a fiver)

One good thing about freelance life is I get to go to galleries and museums pretty much whenever I want. I can work around it. And I get to spend a day with my love when he has a day off - it’s been actual years since we could do that regularly. I have been doing all those things I’ve not got around to. One of these was going for a proper look around the Jewish Museum where Giz hadn’t been since his school days. If you’ve not been, just go. I cried at least once but it’s joyous, funny, insightful and celebratory alongside the inevitable soul-crushing elements. The team there are great as well, so full of stories and enthusiasm. After a couple of hours engrossed, we emerged hungry. Luckily the cafe does fantastic food. “Kosher-style” they call it which does seem a bit odd given the strict rules of keeping Kosher but they call it this because the food isn’t prepped under on-site Beth Din supervision. It’s all vegetarian and though the menu is small, it’s all good. We really enjoyed a Brackman’s bagel topped with cream cheese and the cafe’s own veggie version of lox. 

Vocation U OK Hon? Pineapple hot honey sour (about a fiver)

A friend’s 30th birthday took me back to Whalley Range Carlton Club, a place I don’t go to often enough but whenever I do, I vow to go more often. It’s got all the student union meets village football club community vibes but with better drinks. The beer options are particularly strong so we worked our way through them and the one that grabbed me by the back of my eye stalks was U OK Hon? A sour beer from Vocation with a Garbage Pail Kids style can design. The bartender warned me it was spicy and they weren’t kidding. Think Ramona’s mango spicy marg in beer form.

Tomato ramen at Gyoza Wang (about £15)

I love ramen and Manchester has tons of it at the moment with at least two more biggies set to open this year in the shape of New Wave Ramen opening near 10 Tib Lane and House of Fu on Portland Street. Gyoza Wang has been closed for a while but reopened in August now with added ramen. It’s really near me but had slipped under my radar so I went to check it out. The decor is right up my alley, lots of images of moody cats and a statue of a person with a gyoza for a head. It’s also massive, which you wouldn’t think from its exterior which makes it look like a teeny takeaway squidged between Dominos and Grand Daddy’s diner. But head downstairs and it opens out into a huge space. The menu is fairly short with loads of different homemade gyoza to choose from alongside perhaps five different ramen dishes. I always think of ramen as mega-filling and rich (if the broth’s done right of course). But this broth was lightened by the addition of tomato giving it almost an Italianate touch. Topped with fried chicken, the prerequisite soft-boiled egg and some shredded wood ear mushroom, it was reassuringly simple but confident. I’ll be back here regularly now I’ve found it.

For full disclosure, the below items were enjoyed as part of various invited press visits. It’s a huge privilege to be invited to try things and I am very grateful for these treats. But I only include things I genuinely loved in this column, whether I paid for them or not.

Milk loaf and “the good butter” - WOOD

I hadn’t been to WOOD in ages. I think it was the tasting menu approach that was putting me off. It felt too posh for a regular meal out and not quite fancy enough for a really special occasion. I feel a bit bad for neglecting it. Anyway, ole Woody’s had a rethink and reluctantly (I heard) binned off the tasting menus. I got invited along to check out the new menu approach and was pleasantly surprised. I’m way more keen to go back again now. We enjoyed mackerel, sweetbreads, lamb sausage, artichoke and a beautiful blackcurrant and liquorice dessert but it was a simple bit of bread that got the biggest wows out loud from us. Milk roll might sound a bit plain but this bitch was anything but basic. I think it’s the prettiest bread I have seen in a restaurant, shaped like a flower, shiny glazed and sprinkled with dried flowers and herbs. But it was the tear and reveal of the softest fluffiest interior almost as tactile as my cat’s (strictly off-limits) tummy that got me - and everyone on my Instagram too. Slathered with “the good butter” which is speckled with nostril-clearing baby thyme and shreds of pink lamb, it’s a truly beautiful thing.

Beef shin campanelle - Onda (£13)

I’m definitely a proper adult now but the ways in which I still behave like a child are many. One of these is letting my greed take over when it comes to ordering food even though I really should know better. The lovely PR for Onda, Fran, gave us sensible guidelines for how much to order from the pasta and pizza tasting menu for two people: three dishes and a couple of sides. We obeyed and ordered two pasta dishes, a (side plate-sized) pizza, a green salad and an arancini. Reader, it was plenty, but no sooner had we polished all that off did we order just one more pasta dish for the road. We’d gone light(ish) with the previous ones, a carbonara and a crab tortellini (both incredible btw) but this ragu was a beast. Slow-cooked beef shin, as intense as that Xmas episode of The Bear served with campanelle pasta (which to me looks like tiny gramophone horns). That’s not rich enough for these maniacs though, because it’s all blanketed with béchamel at the last min. If you order one thing from Onda’s menu, let it be this dish. But try not to do it after you’ve already eaten plenty. Walking home was actually painful.

Spaghett - Henry C (£5)

Remember when everyone wouldn’t shut up about the Sbagliato being a Negroni with Prosecco in it in a husky voice a la Emma D’Arcy? Well, Chorlton cocktail bar Henry C’s Spaghett is sort of like a Negroni with lager in it. Not sold? Ever tried a Schofferhoffer? This drink is somewhere in that flavour land that but shorter and boozier - Aperol, pink grapefruit and lager. Henry C kindly invited me down to try some of their cocktails and I stuck around after a couple of generous freebies for one more from their Thursday night £5 Negroni menu. I was a bit disappointed to find this drink wasn’t invented in Chorlton but in Baltimore USA by a bartender called Reed Cahill and is named after a character from Adult Swim rather than some long pasta that’s been snipped a bit shorter. Nevertheless, it’s far easier to get to Chorlton than Baltimore to try it and try it you should.

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(All images in the feature were taken by me, please credit me if you share any of them, ta.)