SoLita, Northern Quarter

My favourite thing about Solita is their bio on Twitter: "Manchester's 150th best restaurant according to Tripadvisor." Bad news fellas, you've moved down in the world: you're now 172nd. I'm sure the restaurant owners are quaking in their boots... In all seriousness though, many of my favourite food bloggers seem to bloody love SoLita; since it's been more than a year since Jamie and I visited, we decided to remind ourselves what all the fuss is about.

The first time we bobbed in for their seemingly bargainous lunch deal. For £5.95, there's a selection of hefty sounding sandwiches, one salad and a chilli. Though I was seriously tempted by the pulled pork toastie, given that I still hadn't overcome my own toastie machine bereavement, I went a bit healthier and chose the 'Charcoal grilled Caesar chicken salad'. Well, it would have been healthier if I hadn't developed serious food envy from their Twitter account repeatedly posting delectable looking images of their nduja spiced baked beans inside a portion of mac'n'cheese.

Heaven on a plate? Little bit.

I could eat a portion of this right now. Perhaps every day. It was good. I'm even going to say the mac'n'cheese might be better than Jamie's. Only might be, because I quite like being his girlfriend and I don't want him to give me the heave for saying such things. It was a little tepid, and I do quite like dishes such as this steaming hot but I'll forgive them this time.

The chicken Caesar was nice: croutons made from the same bread J's sandwich was served on, and appropriate amounts of dressing, but where were the anchovies?! I know Caesars don't always have them but that salty hit of my favourite fishy friends belong here in my opinion. Just four of them maybe? Please?

J was happily munching away on his SoLita whilst I debated combining the Caesar salad with aforementioned side order. (I didn't, phew!). He did comment that the bread was a little dry, but also that it had a good flavour and he wondered whether it had even seen a little herb garden at some point - though perhaps this scent was coming from elsewhere. For the uninitiated, a SoLita is the restaurant's own take on a Reuben: warm Salt Beef, Emmenthal cheese, Big Manc sauce and chow chow slaw. Jamie had a side of fries, which I can also verify were of the tip-top variety.

We enjoyed our good value lunch meal so much so that several weeks later, after the success of our second supper club, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner here with our earnings. I must start by saying that in their defence, we did rock up at 8:45 on a warm Sunday night, and were told they served until nine. 

We were served by the same waitress both times, whom I found to be generally friendly and efficient. Given that there were only two other tables in the restaurant, we were seated and served speedily. J had a bottle of  Brooklyn (pretty good value at £3.50), and I, a small glass of the house red, a Merlot (£4.75). 

As Hanger steak has recently become my favourite cut of beef, I wanted to see how an Inka grill could improve an already awesome meal. Jamie went for the KFB burger, involving: melted Monterey Jack cheese, jalapenos, BBQ sauce, and kentucky fried bacon.

When the waitress took our order, she didn't ask how I wanted my steak. I naively assumed this was because she - and the chefs - knew that there's no point in having a Hanger steak anything other than rare. It's a tough cut of meat, and if you cook it past this juicy bloody mess, it just ain't no good. Unfortunately, it seemed this wasn't the case.

Poor cow, it died in vain :(

My steak was a huge disappointment. The meat was overcooked, I'd say medium at best. It also hadn't been left to rest so my fries and salad were swimming in a pool of bloody juices. Maybe this was a good thing as the salad had just been dumped on the plate, undressed, so this at least stopped them from being as dry as a Ryvita (no offence, crackers).

As often seems to be the case in such circumstances, all the staff seemed to disappear at the moment you actually want to talk to them. There was no check back, and so no opportunity to correct this miserable meat. Granted, I could have said something at the end of the meal, but given that we were now the only table left in the restaurant, I really didn't want to cause a fuss when it was evident the staff wanted to get out of there, and so did I...

Jamie's burger was fine. He ate it all up. No complaints there. And I really should add that despite the sorry state of my plate of food, the actual flavour of the Hanger was still pretty good. I just had a sore jaw by the end of it.

So, I'm undecided. One decent trip and one disappointing. The latter was near closing time, and I probably ought to have said something; I just assumed that a restaurant famed for its Inka grill would either ask how a customer likes their steak cooking, or cook it right. As I said before, other bloggers such as Hungry Hoss and Food Geek seem to really enjoy SoLita and I trust their opinions on dining, so I say not to just listen to me, but make up your own mind.

NOTE: Since publishing this blog post, the owner of SoLita - Franco - has been in touch and asked when we dined so he could look into it. He seemed accepting of the - we hope - constructive criticism. What's that? A restaurant owner who listens to feedback? Well, he'd have no place on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

SoLita
Turner Street, Manchester
M4 1DW
0161 839 2200

Byron hamburgers, Waterloo

This mouth won't wait for no photo.

Unfortunately, this isn't a post about the brand spanking new Byron hamburgers in Manchester city centre, but it is a post about Byron hamburgers on the Cut in Waterloo! A trip to London for bank holiday weekend saw a total of three burgers consumed, a feat I have not achieved since living above GBK for near on a year (OH, I miss those days).

Sitting on the sunny Southbank, drinking a bottle of Veuve my clever friend spotted in a local offy mispriced at £15.99, saw us very quickly in need of some grub. I remembered there's a supposedly decent gastropub nearby in the shape of the Anchor & Hope, but sadly found it closed. Lo and behold: Byron hamburgers sat directly opposite.

I've been to Byron before and happily found this visit as pleasant as the last. The interior is bright, the service speedy and friendly, and the food pretty damn good. I'd been to Meat Market the same weekend, and whilst I thoroughly enjoyed my double patties, I was secretly quite pleased to find a more refined affair. I can never resist a burger with cheese and bacon (as the bite mark in my photos evidences), and this one was as delicious as usual!

Burger, open. (2013) Please note: this image is due for submission in the Turner Prize 2014.

Possibly my favourite thing about Byron burgers is the MASSIVE gherkin that accompanies them beef things (saying burger over and over is getting repetitive). The piece of pickled cucumber you see before you is actually only 1/20th of the entire thing*. Immense. I think the burger was probably slightly more cooked than I would have eaten at home, but it was actually so tasty - slathered in mature Cheddar and bacon - that I didn't really notice. (Oh, and the booze again might have had something to do with it...)

Chips innit.

Skin on chips are usually a delight, and these were no exception. My friend and I shared a portion along with our burgers, and if your tummy has been filled with bubbles prior to eating, I'd say this is plenty. However if you're more of a Big Ma(n)c kinda guy or gal, then you might want a portion to yourself.

Not to forget this delightful bottle of house red, named on their list as "good" (the wines range from good to best, so the one we had was essentially their worst). At £14.95, it may be a little pricier than some expect for a burger joint, but it went down a treat. Having shared this bottle with just one friend, I'd perhaps recommend others don't: 375ml is quite a lot to consume with just a burger for company, and it resulted in me nearly missing my train back up north... The online menu suggests a great selection of bottled beers, which is music to my ears. Next time, I'll skip the overwhelming amount of red juice and opt for a Kernel instead.

The Byron I visited is located on the Cut, so it's a perfect spot for pre or post-theatre dining if you're visiting the Old (or Young!) Vic, and it's also handily located within walking distance of Waterloo - bypass the overpriced Upper Crust and get yourself a real meal if you've got time to kill round here.

I know Byron may not be as cool or trendy as some burger bars, and is probably a tad overpriced when you factor in fancy toppings like er, spicy BBQ sauce at £1.25, and chips at £3.25, but I like this place: I can visit Byron and enjoy a burger in a grown-up environment, without worrying about the sexist undertones of the menu. I also hear their milkshakes are winners (must work on increasing stomach capacity), if feeling adult ain't always your thing.

I'm yet to visit the new Byron site in Manchester, and sincerely hope I won't be disappointed. From reading Bacon on the Beech's write-up, it sounds like I'm safe. Phew!

*Note: this may be a slight exaggeration. I was suffering from cheap champagne induced sunstroke at the time.

Byron
41-45 The Cut
London SE1 8LF
020 7633 9882

Brunch Club Recipe no. 1 - Earl-Grey Smoked Salmon

Smoking - best done outside

Whenever I read a piece about smoking foods, someone's always quick to evoke the addictive nature of this 'foodie' pursuit. They'll say things like: "you'll want to smoke everything, even the dog food"; "I can't leave for work without my smoking gun"; "Tarquin's only three but smoked hummus is already his favourite food". So is it all it's cracked up to be? 

 

Joking aside, it's a good idea to speculate whether it's worth making certain foodstuffs at home, and this applies equally to home-smoked goods. Several items at our Brunch Club have reached such pricey highs in the supermarket that we rarely buy them, preferring to make our own. Take granola for instance: oats, dried fruits, nuts and seeds, mixed together and toasted for more than a Bhutanese family spends on a weekly shop. The cons of making things yourself are usually time- and equipment-related; the pros are you have a better understanding of what's gone into your food and can produce a product that suits you. With our earl grey smoked salmon you get the added benefit of saving a shed-load of money.

Let's take a similar product as a comparison: Heston from Waitrose Lapsang Souchong Tea Smoked Salmon which sells for £4.99 per 100g. I went to Out of The Blue (preferred fishmonger alert!), purchased a side of salmon at roughly £9, cured it and smoked it, ending up with enough salmon to feed 8 people and plenty leftover to fit snugly into several cream-cheese filled bagels. (This said with the caveat that I purchased a smoking gun to facilitate the whole process; but if you can see yourself eating a lot of smoked food, then it's a worthwhile investment and a very fun toy.) Regarding the smoking, I found several recipes which state simply "light the tea leaves" or recommend heating in a wok until smoking. From experience, the former is actually rather tricky to do and produces very little smoke, as anyone who's ever tried to light a cigarette without drawing on it will testify; the latter is prone to filling your house with smoke, never mind the sucking power (ooh,er) of your extractor fan. And burning earl grey is particularly acrid, believe me.

So some sort of dedicated smoking device (a tin or a gun are the cheapest options) will stop your house stinking like Waynetta Slob's ashtray. (The aforementioned problems might be to do with tea so if anyone's got a reliable tea-smoking method do let us know). I don't want to get into the logistics of smoking here as I'm going to assume if you've got a tin or smoking gun then you've read the instructions. If not I'd recommend a blowtorch to get those pesky tea leaves to burst into flames. What I will say is that there are a lot of variations when it comes to curing and smoking times; and my advice is not to obsess about it. The longer the salmon is in contact with the curing mix the drier it will become; with the smoke, the smokier it becomes. Simple. Curing with a 2:1 salt to sugar ratio for 16 hours and smoking for three half-hour periods with fresh smoke gave us a very palatable product. Tea smoke is more subtle than the traditional oak so the salmon can probably take a little more.

Earl Grey Smoked Salmon

1 Side of salmon (approx. 900g)

Cure:
250g salt
125g granulated sugar
A few sprigs of dill, roughly chopped
Leaves from 1 earl grey teabag

For smoking:
Leaves from 2 earl grey teabags

1. Mix salt, sugar and dill together; and moisten the tea leaves with a little water.
2. Cut salmon in two if too large to fit in any container you own.
3. Spread a thin layer of curing mix on the bottom of a container.
4. Place the salmon skin-side down and cover with the moistened tea leaves then the remaining cure (spread less cure on the thinner tail-end areas to prevent over-salting).
5. Cover and place in fridge for 16 hours.
6. Rinse off cure and leave salmon uncovered in the fridge to dry for a couple of hours.
7. To smoke, place salmon on a cooling rack above a bowl of ice inside a large seal-able container (see picture).
8. Use your preferred method to light the tea leaves. Get a decent amount of smoke in the container then seal. Do this outside if possible!
9. Let smoke for half an hour then repeat.
10. Store covered in fridge and slice when ready to eat.

Notes:
- If you're going to the effort of smoking your own salmon then you might as well buy a side as it's more time efficient and the salmon will keep well
- If you do, however, buy a smaller piece just mix up less cure

The finished product

Apotheca, Northern Quarter

Salted Caramel & Orange Rum Old Fashioned

It hardly seems a day goes by when a new bar hasn't just opened or a pop-up hasn't launched in the once-trendy, now over-saturated area of the Northern Quarter. Don't get me wrong: there's still lots of places I like in the area, it's just that I prefer not to have to wait in a queue of twenty-five people to get into a bar that used to be a lot less pretentious.

We recently reviewed Apotheca on Thomas Street for the website Social and Cocktail - and fortunately found out it's something of a pretence-free haven. To find out more about what we drank and thought, read our review here.

Brunch Club, Sunday 2 June

Pecan and salted-caramel rolls, croissants, and chorizo and courgette gruyere muffins

Sunday mornings should be about relaxing and eating. Well, we think so anyway... which is why we're giving up ours on June 2nd to make sure you can kick back and stuff yourself silly on a (posh!) buffet style spread of all the best breakfast items.

Near enough everything will be homemade, from the flaky, buttery croissants, to the Sourdough bread and the butter to go on top! There'll be sweet and savoury alike with chorizo and courgette muffins, and salted caramel pecan rolls. Not to mention our very own home-smoked salmon with the most decadent scrambled eggs.

For the full menu and to book your place go to Eventbrite.

Cibo, Didsbury Village

Beef carpaccio with Caesar dressing and San Daniele ham, burrata & Umbrian virgin oil 

The last time Jamie and I ate at a restaurant in East Didsbury was on our first date at Casa Tapas. The food was underwhelming, the wine distinctly average and the service forgettable. That didn't really matter at the time: we were just getting to know each other and if I was to be romantic, I'd suggest that it was the spending time with each other that really mattered.

Three years later and food, wine and service definitely do matter.

East Didsbury always seems to me a funny old place: it has a fantastic, traditional butchers in Axons, the calorific Cheese Hamlet, and the lovely little greengrocers where you can find the most niche selection of herbs and vegetables, but with regards to eating out in the area, we're (evidently) rarely so inclined. We also found - save the Art of Tea - that there's a poor selection of nice bars. We returned this time to try out new Venetian tapas restaurant, Cibo, and it looks set to make a killing.

We waited at the bar for our table to be 'prepared', and started with a couple of drinks from their cocktail menu. Although I had envy eyes for Jamie's Cordite, for the sake of variety, I went for the Quarantine (gin, cucumber, lemongrass). His was, essentially, an expertly made tequila-old fashioned, smoked in a decanter. Nice touch, the smoking gun: it added depth to the cocktail and was akin to a mezcal in taste. Mine was strong on the cucumber, given that the bartender used a juicer to make it, and slightly too sweet for my taste... but I am a surprisingly hardened drinker, given my Irish blood.

There's a small cicchetti menu (as you can probably see from the above photo!) offering mini Venetian tapas dishes, but there was so much we fancied from the main menu, we skipped over these. We'd already received a portion of their homemade foccacia (I could eat this all day), accompanied by olive oil from Forli in Italy, and some of the most delicious Sicilian olives I've ever eaten. These are a complimentary nibble for every diner: when even the free stuff is this good, you know you're on to a winner.

We shared the beef carpaccio with Caesar dressing and San Daniele ham with burrata and Umbrian virgin oil (pictured above). Everything was delicious. I suppose carpaccio isn't so much about the meat when served with a dressing like this, but rather about the hits of umami exploding in the mouth! Even the parmesan on top was bloody delicious. San Daniele ham is similar to a Parma-style, but supposedly slightly sweeter in taste, and the accompanying burrata was suitably creamy and rich. For the uninitiated (as I was, until I saw some reduced in the supermarket and devoured the whole pot in one sitting), burrata is essentially mozzarella + butter + cream. Unsurprisingly, it's fucking amazing and the number one cause of heart attacks in Italy*.

'Mains' (i.e. more tapas) consisted of ravioli neri filled with crab (pictured above), sea bream with gremolata, calves livers Veneziana and an unctuous side of cauliflower with Taleggio. Though the above was the prettiest dish of the night, and the pasta well made, it definitely needed more crab. We had been recommended it by the waiter, so I was hoping for a crab-fest in my mouth (I should probably edit that description for fear of STD-based jokes, but I'd quite like to hear what you've got... I mean the jokes, not venereal diseases), but unfortunately the crab didn't quite stand out as it should have.

We both commented on the acidity of the calves livers dish, which broke through the otherwise rich sauce wonderfully. I've looked up a recipe and it does contain a lot of vinegar, which would explain that! Most of the calves livers were perfectly cooked, but there were a few smaller bits which were a little overdone. If I were them, I'd try and cut the pieces to the same size, just to make it easier for themselves when cooking a dish like this. The first sea bream dish we had was actually the opposite: really underdone. We alerted them to this, and they brought us another a few minutes later; the second was perfect, glistening under the gremolata with a crisp, salty skin and an undercurrent of smoke from the grill. Perfect. Further, the way they handled the 'complaint' was brilliant: immediately apologetic, with a new one brought out as quickly as possible.

Excuse the blur!

They seemed keen for us to try their desserts, so I went for a classic tiramisu, and Jamie for the passionfruit panna cotta  Both tasty and the latter with a little wobble (like me, after the meal). My only criticism would be that I found it difficult to scoop the layers out of the glass the tiramisu was in, and ended up getting a lot of icing sugar up my nose...! (Not fun).
Jamie was also persuaded into having a coffee as the waiter playfully told us he was the best cappuccino maker in Didsbury... Unfortunately, one of his protégés ended up making ours so we didn't get to taste the winning frothy coffee! Service was excellent throughout: friendly, attentive, polite - and most importantly - they actually looked like they were enjoying themselves. The two male waiters on the floor seemed to have a bit of a comedy duo thing going on, which worked brilliantly, and I really enjoyed watching their interactions! Despite having been invited by the restaurant and Manchester Confidential, and therefore received a complimentary meal, as a very honest individual, the cost of this meal wouldn't be enough to make me lie (maybe one at the French Laundry could do that - but somehow I doubt Thomas Keller needs to pay anyone to say his food tastes good), so I'm honestly recommending Cibo. It's not yet perfect, but from the dishes we ate, I'm confident we'll enjoy it when we return...

*This isn't actually true. Well... it may be, but I have no facts to support this outlandish statement.

Cibo
12 Warburton Street
Didsbury Village
M20 6WA
0161 448 2222

3twentyone: smokehouse, serving the best onion rings in Manchester

Best retrospective restaurant order ever made.

I've finally realised the purpose for writing this blog: to tell readers where to go for the best onion rings in Manchester. Not to downplay the other virtues of the newly opened smokehouse, 3twentyone, but damn, they were some good onion rings. We nearly didn't try them: when ordering, I told Jamie to stop being such a fattie and make do with chips. However, when he later spied them on a neighbouring table, he couldn't resist and quickly added them on to the order. Possibly the best move he's made in our entire relationship. Wonderfully crisp specimens, we managed to devour the lot of 'em, save a Siamese pair, which Jamie decided should be worn as goggles. Lottie Moore has the evidence (bet she was glad she shared a table with this unsophisticated pair!).

So 3twentyone officially opened to the public today, but we were lucky enough to visit on their soft opening, receiving a fantastic and complimentary meal. I cheekily e-mailed them when I saw a tweet asking for opening night visitors; they didn't know we wrote a food blog (unless they did an internet stalk) so we had intended to go for a night out, without thinking about what we'd write later. Turns out, the meal warranted a write-up because other people definitely need to know about this joint.

It would only have been appropriate to have cocktails in a 'joint' like this.

And it does have a feel of a "joint": the staff are suited and booted in 1930s style uniforms, with braces and all. The deep mahogany of the furniture, jazz tunes and beautiful back bar feel a world apart from the Deansgate pub, which is situated beneath the restaurant. It does make for an interesting experience when having to shimmy between a large group of football lovers when in need of a trip to the loo, but it hardly hinders the experience.

We started with cocktails: for Jamie, a sweet Manhattan, and I opted for the 3twentyone signature Martini. I just saw the words 'gin' and 'elderflower cordial' and was sold on those grounds, stupidly not realising it was going to basically be a gin martini. Despite Jamie suggesting it smelt like lime cordial, it was the first gin-no-juice-Martini drink I've managed to finish, so I say hats off to them! Top notch glassware too.

Rather fancy chicken wings, them.

To start, I really wanted the boneless, smoked chicken wings. Unfortunately, as Jamie is 'king of the wing' in our house, he got first dibs. I was bloody jealous when I tasted them too: the flavour was divine. My only disappointment being that they were boneless... sucking chicken juices off one's fingers is half the fun (oo er).

Excuse the shoddy photo quality here!

Instead, I opted for Mr. Holden's Manchester Egg. Not usually a fan of black pudding, the stuff here was bloody gorgeous, not cheap or 'gritty' tasting at all. I was slightly disappointed that the yolk was overcooked, but this was easily forgiven (because I was staring so hard at Jamie's wings).

He didn't look happy about being eaten.

You don't usually see a choice of four different kinds of fish on a 'smokehouse' menu. Some may say that it would be foolish to choose one of them when meat is clearly the speciality here, but I bloody love fish, and the idea of it cooked on a smoker style barbecue had me sold. It was incredibly tender, stuffed with dill and shredded fennel. It was served whole, but we were also informed that it could be served filleted if desired, perfect! They also offer salmon, mackerel and swordfish. We had balsamic roasted candy beetroots which were pretty tasty, and 'twice-cooked chips' to accompany our mains; the latter were average: maybe they'd been sat on the pass for a while. I hope they're usually better as you gotta have great chips with steak!

This was gone in about twenty seconds.

Jamie went for the rib-eye, medium rare. I'll assume he enjoyed this as his usually chivalrous self made a dash for the nearest exit (fortunately located nearby) and he neglected to offer me a taste until he was down to his last mouthful! He later tells me that it was slightly overdone, but this obviously didn't hinder his experience at the time. There's a selection of sauces to choose from at an additional charge (£1.25) and J opted for the chimichurri. Jamie later managed to make room for a blueberry cheesecake, which was also gone in seconds. Jesus, that boy can eat.

Looking at the menu I'm already planning a return trip (on my own, so I can have the chicken wings all to myself with a side of onion rings). They have a great selection of steaks including ones at lower price points (both the flat iron and hanger are just £11.95), and the burgers are all under a tenner. They're not doing anything crazy or particularly different, but they're doing 'normal' rather well, in my opinion.

The interior is quite swanky for a restaurant above a pub, and they also have a gorgeous looking roof terrace. Our waitress was brilliant, and even Jamie admits that it was amongst the best service we've had in Manchester. All that, and it was only opening night? I've worked an opening night in a restaurant before, and it didn't bloody go like that! If that's how things have started at 3twentyone, then I'm looking forward to seeing more of them very soon.

3twentyone (up the stairs in the Deansgate pub),
321 Deansgate, Manchester