ANNIES, the restaurant owned by the delightful Coronation Street actress Jennie McAlpine who, of course, plays Fizz on Corrie, and her remarkable Dad, Tom McAlpine, has just been placed in the top 100 restaurants in the UK.
This food is shocking, boring, below average. It’s the kind of food you would expect at Butlins.
Gordo hadn’t thought about this place for a while. Mainly because of one of the most surreal business meetings he’s had in all the ten years of writing and selling for Confidential.
Gordo had walked in one afternoon, just after Annies opened, interested to see what the fuss was all about. The Corrie link meant that the traditional press had gone overboard with the launch. Walking to the bar, he asked what draft beer was on; the answer was non. Ok, what bottled beer? Fine, he’ll have one of them. Like any bloke, Gordo remained at the handsome bar to have that quiet drink.
Annies with a natty hat
“I’m sorry sir,” the barman says, “but you can’t stand at the bar”.
“Ok,” replies the fat one, a bit baffled, I’ll take a stool.”
“I’m sorry sir, but we don’t allow people to sit at the bar either, you have to sit in an armchair.”
Gordo takes a seat, and the nice young man comes over with the beer, on a tray. It’s all a bit weird. Then Mr McAlpine comes over, introduces himself and sits down. He then explained to Gordo that he doesn’t want the type of person who stands at a bar, drinking beer in pints. Previously, he had given our editor, Jonathan Schofield, a now curious quote.
"We want it to be like an Accrington Working Men's Club meets the Ivy."
Well, so far, it had failed on one count. Mr McAlpine went on to say that he didn’t like food critics, as they didn’t know what they were talking about.
Gordo’s quiet drink had turned into a nightmare. He makes his excuses and leaves, Mr McAlpine paying for the beer, in a rather pointed way.
Accrington Working Mens Club with some more natty hats
Two months later, the PR lady from Annies calls to invite Gordo to come down to pitch for the advertising account. Walking down into the basement, a place with a distinctly home-made feel, he joins the table with the PR person and two other ladies and starts to chat. After a few minutes, Tom, comes to the table. He starts the meeting off with a fairly blunt statement. Clearly Tom was in a foul mood and he wasn’t arsed who knew.
“Right, let me start Gordo by cutting to the chase. As I previously said, I don’t like food critics; none of them have got a clue what they write about. Furthermore, you lot only give good reviews when people advertise with you. Then you crucify the rest.”
The PR Girl’s jaw has dropped to the floor, whilst the other two ladies around the table started shuffling their feet nervously.
Gordo was wondering what the hell he had been called in for.
“So,” Tom carries on, “this is what my offer is. You write a great review and I may consider advertising with you.”
Gordo said thanks but no thanks and goes to walk out. Half way up the stairs, the PR girl begs Gordo to come back and at least go through how the advertising works. Taking a deep breath Gordo does and is met with the same offer from Manchester’s Alpha Male restaurateur, Big T.
Write a great review and you may get some advertising spend is the offer again. Gordo explains that scored reviews on Confidential are always impartial, as the writer finds on the review visit. Gordo politely declines the fabulous offer and leaves.
Lost in time interior
Ten months later, Gordo is told that the restaurant has won a place in the Top 100 restaurants in the UK. Blimey. Prepared to eat humble pie, or, more importantly, Betty’s hot pot that Big T was saying was the best in the UK, Gordo decides to have lunch last Saturday.
Walking down the stairs, Gordo is once again struck by the odd feeling to this place. Like its been built by people more used to building film sets at Granada, or a small family builder has got stuck in - on a budget. The lighting, all bare bulbs with no shades, is stark, allowing no softness and resulting in harsh shadows.
The tables are laid out bare, with cheaply printed menus and, as it’s Christmas, cheap crackers. About 50% full on the second to last Saturday before the big day, half the clientele were wearing paper hats. The other half looked like lost sheep, wondering if they had walked into one of those movies where, having been lulled into a false sense of security, zombies suddenly burst from the wooden panels of the walls to beat the living shit out of everyone.
All of them were wondering what time Fizz would come out of the kitchen, having cooked their lunch personally, so she could then spend hours giggling with them at their tables.
Mushrooms on salad mountain
Gordo looked through the menus. The inevitable ‘Turkey dinner’ was there. This fixed price deal was not what Gordo expected nor wanted from a restaurant in the top 100 in the UK. Asking for an a la carte menu, Gordo scanned it. It looked hugely limited, the kind of menu thrown together when Gordo used to work in The Legh Arms in Prestbury, forty years ago. Every time the chef buggered off on a bender the crap table d’hote short menu came out.
In this case the a la carte asked for by Gordo was called ‘Annies Favourites’. It has three starters, five main courses and two puddings. It looked boring in the extreme. Soup (vegetable), chicken liver pate, mushrooms for starters. Oh dear.
Mushrooms on toast (£6.25) for fatty. He likes to make his own these days, as the varieties available, even in the local Tesco, are pretty fantastic. It would be interesting to get a lesson from a top 100 chef. Would he go for a mixture of shitake, dried morels, oyster and plain buttons? Would he use a little fresh tarragon? Start the process with Normandy unsalted butter, splash of white wine, and then finish with crème fraiche and a squeeze of lemon juice?
What arrived took Gordo back thirty years. On top of an infantile mound of salad leaves were two thick slices of supermarket white bread, toasted. On top, fried plain old button mushrooms, which had been pan-fried. Then something happened that produced a sparse cream sauce of nothingness. There was a dribble of vinaigrette around the plate, which the chef had cleverly made to taste exactly like one of Paul Newman’s in bottles that you can buy at Sainsbury’s. There’s one just around the corner, as it happens.
Terrible.
Moving on to the main course. Gordo hadn’t fancied the cottage pie. Fish and chips were a no, as well as vegetable stew. They are really pushing the boat out for the veggies. Annies burger, or sirloin steak.
Sirloin steak (£16.95) then. The steak came with fried mushrooms and onions, which Gordo had missed on the menu description. They were the same mushrooms as before, the cheapest variety on offer with a few onions thrown in, not quite cooked through. There was a slice of warm tomato, the bottom bit. The chips, again, had been cleverly made to resemble one of McCain’s catering chunky chips; a very popular brand, it needs to be said.
Mushrooms on meat mountain
The steak was pan fried, small and chewy with all those fibers still there from a beast that has not been hung for long enough. Freezing has the same effect. Within three hundred meters of this place, there are six restaurants that go to huge lengths to serve the best beef available, hung for weeks and cooked on Josper grills at 400 degrees centigrade to produce some of the best steaks in the UK. One group even has its own herds.
By this time Gordo was beginning to get depressed. How do people accept these standards in today?
Gordo was offered a choice of sauces. He chose the Diane sauce. This came in a little pot on the side and was just like The Fat One’s first attempt at gravy when he forgot to pour off the fat. It was horrible. Weirdly, dipping one of those fat chips in it benefited both of them.
Then the pudding. Jam Roly Poly (£5.95). With Custard. Gordo stared at it. The slice of roly poly, looking dry, with far too little jam, had a strawberry sat on top. A big fat out-of-season strawberry, sliced in half, tasteless. The only reason it could be there was to take the diner’s mind off the dryness sat underneath. The custard rescued the dryness but there was little flavour. It was a poor effort. Yet once again, Gordo could not have told the difference between the supermarket custard (are they called ‘Taste the Difference’ round the corner in Sainsbury’s?) and this one. Yellow nothingness.
Simplicity sometimes isn't a virtue
This food is shocking, boring, below average. It’s the kind of food you would expect at Butlins.
The wine? As with all poor wine lists, most of the years aren’t recorded, allowing management to have greater stock choice, with the benefit of not having to work to hard when ordering. Don’t expect well-priced nectar. The Amalti del Vino Primitivo isn’t bad mind you and at £23 pretty manageable.
And service? Superb. Attentive, pleasant and enthusiastic. And lots of them. Seven were in the room at the same when Gordo visited, serving about thirty punters. Maybe Big T was anticipating full houses. He doesn’t seem to be getting them on Saturdays mind you, whilst his competitors are rammed with the smart crowd, those that like beer, along with a bar.
Finally Gordo checks this top 100 malarkey. Ah. It’s the Toptable top 100, the one that has been accused of not vetting the punters doing the voting. Apparently, if you want, you can sit there every night putting in glowing 5* reviews, pretending to be a normal punter. That’s a bit naughty isn’t it?
The Big T told Gordo that he didn’t believe groups like Piccolinos, RBG, Grill on the Alley had a clue and he was going to show them the way forward.
It’s a year later, and he still has Gordo baffled with those tactics.
As to Mr McAlpine's quote on The Ivy? The current owner of the latter place, Richard Caring, would laugh his bollocks off. Or sue.
You can follow Gordo on Twitter here @gordomanchester
ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
Annies, 5 Old Bank Street, City centre, 0161 839 4423.
Rating: 10/20 (please read the scoring system in the box below, venues are rated against the best examples of their kind)
Food: 3/10 (mushrooms 3, steak 2, roly poly 4)
Service: 4.5/5
Ambience: 2.5/5
