RESTAURANT REVIEW: Delkery

Name: Confidentials
Address: 18 - 22 Lloyd Street, Manchester, Greater Manchester, M2 5WA, GB
Telephone: 0161 832 2880

Lucy Tomlinson 22 April 2016

LUCK was in the air when I visited Delkery, the lunch-brunch-café spot on Dale Street.

There were groups of men in tweed suits, laid-back newspaper readers, people in a hurry. Late breakfasters, early lunchers and more fascinators than this comfortable little place on Dale Street probably sees the rest of the year put together.

There was even a small man eating the most enormous full English. As I marvelled at his apparently miraculous bacon-to-bodyweight ratio, it was pointed out to me that today was Grand National day and he was probably trying to make up his body weight for later on. He certainly looked like he was doing a good job.

Delkery itself is situated in the old Westminster Chambers, a Grade II-listed building. Light pours in through large windows, and there are lots of original features that give the place a homely air. The general take is healthy-meets-hearty (with a skew towards the latter). Healthy is principally represented by the juice menu, while hearty takes the form of build-your-own breakfasts and burgers.

Starting off with good intentions, we ordered three of the juices – the Brainberry, the Glow Juice and the Liver Cleanse. I felt these three summed up pretty much every life goal I’ve ever had. If only such achievement could really be supped through a straw.

Of course, good intentions never last for long. Though I liked the look of the build-your-own menu, I had to order the intriguingly named Devil’s Meat with latkes (£6.95, main picture, top).

I’ve never heard of such a thing, though it seems to be very closely related to chilli. In fact, a swift Google informed me that Devil’s Meat (sans latkes) is the name of a black metal album rather than any particular well-known dish, so this seems to be the chef’s own inspired name. And it does give you a good idea of the pile of smoky, spicy beef, laced with paprika and chilli, served over crisply fried potato cakes (in fact I might have served them on the side to preserve their crispness but no matter).

This combination of meat, stodge and spice is the perfect hangover buster - and it looked like a couple of the customers might have been looking for such a cure.

Schnitzel

On the lighter side was the schnitzel with Czech-style potato salad (£6.95). Schnitzel is a mittel-European classic and one that reminds me of being young on holiday, it being the larger, more sophisticated cousin of a chicken nugget.

Beating chicken within an inch of its life before breading it seems to somehow make it more refined. From what I can tell, what defines a potato salad as “Czech-style” is that you throw in whatever you fancy alongside the potatoes, which makes for a very robust and tasty side.

The accompanying green salad had been doused in sumac, its sour-lemonish taste cutting through the chicken nicely.

Our third dish was the Arabian stew with couscous, topped with halloumi (£6.95). The stew itself was vegetable, with courgettes, peppers and cauliflower featuring strongly.

Arabian stew

The nice thing was that despite being cooked through, the vegetables retained their shape and texture well, making the stew comforting and nourishing at the same time. The down side was that, despite a good build up of heat, there wasn’t much else going on in the flavour department. The halloumi was good, great texture and a slight garlic bite (you can leave this off if you want a vegan dish though).

To round off our sampling of the Chef’s Specials menu, we also had the steak sandwich (£5.95) with sweet potato wedges (£1.50 extra as we had both salad and wedges). The sandwich was fine, if a little uninspired, while the accompanying salad had the same drenching of sumac as the schnitzel, only the sour flavour was less successful here. The sweet potato wedges were more like sweet potato bricks, but well-cooked and satisfying nonetheless.

Steak sandwich

Delkery doesn’t do desserts, as such, more the usual range of cakes and biscuits. The adults were groaning with food but one lucky little customer (my son) got lucky when a kind gentleman donated him his chocolate muffin from the scratch-card promotion Delkery are currently running.

It must have been an auspicious day as I also managed to win four sandwiches. Despite the access to fodder this job gives me, I was uncommonly pleased with my success. (Free food never fails to delight.)

The muffin was a very good example of its type, sticky and chocolatey and all things toddlers (and grown-ups) love. If you are reading, kind gentleman, you made a small boy very happy, and slightly sugar crazed, so thank you.

Delkery is hard to pigeonhole. It’s much too refined to be a greasy spoon but not pretentious enough to be a hipster joint. Not quite middle Eastern, not quite Mittel European. It’s just… comfortable. Cosy. Nice. If it’s your local lunch spot then you’re in luck indeed.