Beef & Pudding Reviewed

MAKING a suet is like making a souffle, you're a second away from disaster. 

Paul Newman and Dave Mooney are pouring lots of passion and imagination into this city centre venue. Some of it needs refining particularly they need to look at the trademark suet presentations.

Cooking good quality traditional British food is all about timing both in preparation and in serving. The Sunday roast experience in most pubs and restaurants is dispiriting. If you arrive mid-afternoon the life has left the food and the spuds are sullen, the meat tired and the gravy sulky. 

Good, strong traditional British food is a difficult job for restaurants and pubs to pull off. Fundamentally it's home-cooking best appreciated in family sized units. 

To take this style and attempt to hang bells and bunting off it is harder again. This is what the New Moon Company is doing at Beef & Pudding. You have to admire their sincerity, ambition and effort. 

A light in the night: Beef & Pudding fires up

Unfortunately it's not working out at present.

Signature dish, The Pudding (£14.95 - top picture on this page) is assembled creatively with beef and venison under a suet case, stockpot gravy, horseradish paste, mash and black peas, but it's a clumsy thing.

The peas are a clever addition, proper North of England. My mum made vats of them for bonfire night. Problem is they are placed in the same bowl as the pudding, mash and so on. To get the best from black peas you douse them in malt vinegar, it gives them edge. In one big bowl with the pudd you can't douse with vinegar as it will blight the rest of the dish. The peas should be in a ramekin on the side.  

The Manc Plank

Meanwhile the gravy was lovely but there was so very little of it. A big separate jug of the stuff would work better to apply as required. 

Finallly, the suet mix was cloddish, a fight. I prefer a thinner suet, one with that rich fatty tang yet breaking to reveal a gloriously moist meaty interior (Bryn Evans at the Grill in the Abode Hotel does it well). Beef & Pudding's offering was dry on the inside and disappointing.

Suet mistakes pepper the menu. The No Beef & Pudding (£11.95), a veggie suet, with cheese and onion was a disaster and should be taken off and re-worked. It was sheer mush, wood glue. Not fit for purpose.

No Beef & Pudding

The suet and mushy pea 'feature' in the Beef'ham Tower burger was similarly unpalatable. The latter dish at £15.95 shows where the kitchen - or the concept - is going wrong. This wittily titled burger with brisket, onion rings, 'howling at the moon' sauce, brioche bun and so on is clearly a stab at the sort of burger extravagances provided by Almost Famous (review here). 

Beef'ham Tower doesn't work because it feels forced, a reaction to the market rather than a heartfelt product. The mighty quantity of food - it comes with chips - was between the brioche dry again and claggy to the mouth. In AF it would also have been at least £5 cheaper too. 

Beef'ham Tower

We were on safer ground with the Herdwick lamb stew and dumplings at £13.95 that came with root veg, peas and carrots and redcurrant and mint sauce. This was very good, the dumplings bolstering the fibrous and delicious lamb.   

Lamb stew and dumplings

A pasta excursion (it's mainly British here but not all) with pork belly pappardelle including chorizo and peas would have raised Italian eyebrows but provided good flavours and solid nourishment. A small (which was in fact very large) portion of this is an entirely reasonable £8.95. 

An 8oz steak at £24.95, simply executed and delivered with thick cut chips was one of the better dishes too.  Expensive again though.

Pappardelle

TripeBack to the beginning and a starter of crispy tripe with Lancashire cheese and pickled onions at £5.95 was a highlight of the meal. For those who fear tripe this is an entry levely combo to introduce you to its offal delights. 

Tempura monkfish cheeks at £8.95 were fine but the meaty nature and sizeable chunks of the fish made the tempura struggle. What was lovely here were the cracking home made lime pickle and tandoori mayo. A 'Manc Plank' (£15.95) was more hit than miss and a good sampler for groups. 

Monkfish

The attention grabber in the desserts was an exquisite Seville marmalade custard that went with a decent treacle tart (£5.95) - although the treacle flavour in the tart needs to be stronger. A creme brulee was fine. 

Marmalade custard and treacle tart

The meals I've had at Beef & Pudding have provided a curious experience.

Paul Newman and Dave Mooney, the proprietors, are pouring lots of passion and imagination into their new baby - they have several other pubs in deepest Cheshire. Some of this imagination is misplaced as with Beef'ham Tower, some of it needs refining, particularly they need to look at the trademark suet presentations. 

Getting into the swing of Beef & Pudding

The previous incarnation of Beef & Pudding was The Crown. This was dominated by the giveaway feature of all dying city centre boozers, a big screen showing the football in distorted digital.

That's changed.

The bar area in Beef & Pudding is excellent, the array of ales and wines very good. The general fit-out works with its distressed industrial feel. The staff have been well-trained and amiable (although they need to follow the rules in our article here). 

What Newman and Mooney have done is create interest and excitement on a redundant city centre corner - they've put their money where their mouth is and re-animated a part of the city. Good on them.

They now need to calm things down, restrain their imaginations. 

On the website Beef & Pudding describes itself as an 'urban pub and kitchen'. It's exactly that type of thing Mooney and Newman should temper. Simplicity can be a virtue. The overly complex menu in their urban pub and kitchen will only work if the promises made on the menu are consistently achievable. 

ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE. 

Rating: 13/20
Food: 6/10 (Manchester plank 6.5, Beef'ham tower 6, No beef & pudding 1, the pudding 6, fillet 6.5, lamb stew 7, pappardelle 7, treacle tart 6.5, crispy tripe 7.5, creme brulee 7, monkfish cheeks 7)
Service: 3/5
Ambience: 4/5