Our writers and staff choose their favourite meals from June
ANOTHER month, another round of dishes that held our taste buds to ransom. The Manchester Confidential writing staff (and lesser-spotted species from the likes of social media and technical) share their favourite dishes from June.
The Black Friar’s burger, The Black Friar (£18)
For a pub that stood desolate for almost two decades, the owners who pulled The Black Friar out of its pit of despair in 2021 sure do know how to make up for all those lost years of love. Just take their ‘Pub Grub’ menu, for a start.
I ordered The Black Friar’s Burger expecting to be satisfied. I’d just spent ten minutes gawking (and drooling) at other hearty classics, like beer battered fish and chips and their famous house pies, waltz across the bar. But I didn’t expect to leave teary-eyed.
Upon being served, it was clear The Black Friar don’t fuck about when it comes to portion sizes. I gazed upon a hefty slab of beef, topped with two of the biggest rashers of sweet cured bacon I’ve ever seen, Mrs Kirkham’s cheddar, apple and wholegrain slaw, carefully caressed by a lightly toasted sesame brioche. The beast of a burger was served with a pot of triple-cooked fries and held together with a steak knife to keep its integrity - by this point, I’d lost all mine.
I halved it and looked at the beautiful cross section of beef, cheese and slaw and felt my eyes and mouth water with anticipation. Perhaps it was my potato-free diet that had me delirious, or some holy divinity (a Black Friar, if you will) looking down, but I felt it was fate that had brought me here on this day - that and the ludicrously good after-work drinks deal they had on at the time.
I’ve searched for a burger that satisfies since but nothing has even come close. I suppose I’ll have to go back and take advantage of another round of £6 cocktails. What a shame...
Harley Young @Harley__Young
Frozen mango parfait, King Street Tavern (£9)
One thing about me is that I absolutely love a sweet treat. It’s the thing that I look forward to most when I’m eating out. In fact, a lot of the time I’d rather just skip straight to dessert than eat the entire meal.
I recently visited the King Street Tavern to get some social content for their new ‘Tavern Lunch’ menu. Everything was bloody lovely, but I got particularly excited when they bought over the dessert menu. After pretending I was too full for pudding for about thirty seconds, my dining partner and I picked the Frozen Mango Parfait - a frozen slab of mango and passionfruit parfait encased in white chocolate, and served with a custard donut on the side (plus loads of fancy flowers).
The chocolate was rich and indulgent, but the fruit parfait cut through this and stopped you falling entirely into a sugar coma. It was more of a nice sugary snooze - the perfect balance.
TLDR: 👑🥭🍩😍🤤
Georgie McGowan
Tagliatelle Montecarlo, San Carlo (£18.25)
Sometimes only a fish dish will do.
There’ll always be time for steak, or even an elaborately assembled salad, but when you hanker after some delicious fish the rest of the menu blurs into a kind of white noise.
I arrived at San Carlo on a fishing expedition and found a real treat - the Tagliatelle Montecarlo; plump pieces of monkfish with flat snaking tongues of tagliatelle and that most promising of additions, a lobster bisque.
Every now and then you’ll order something that looks like seafood and quacks like seafood, but doesn’t even vaguely deliver on taste - like reading about lobster in an email thread or looking at a bowl or moules mariniere through two mirrors. If you’ve chosen to name it as such, you better bring the bisque, and this dish did just that.
It didn’t merely (or is it mérly?) taste of the sea with that usual salty kick in the back end (see clams) but was instead mixed and drawn together like on a painters palette to create something worth mulling over and investigating with every mouthful.
David Adamson @davidadamson123
Southside Burger, Almost Famous Withington (£12.50)
Almost Famous kickstarted the burger revolution back when Manchester was starting to fly in the late noughties; the burgers were stacked high, supremely messy, had sweet brioche buns that disintegrated in the mayhem and the half pint of melted cheese ruined many a white shirt. Indeed, even the brightest Hawaiian surfer T wouldn’t camouflage the radioactive gunge and bacon bacon bacon bacon mayo ketchup.
You didn’t attack the fries, they attacked you. As for that miserable fucking Gorilla….
Having not been in for several years, The Grandson and The Daughter took me to the newest Almost Famous in Withington for Father’s Day. The Gorilla’s still there; it was trying to out-stare me. It won.
The other thing that won was the Southside Burger, (£12.50) “double cheeseburger, crispy smokey bacon, cheesey smashed tots, bacon bacon mayo, peri bbq, Jalapeño and onion”.
I bloody loved it. The buns aren’t as sweet as they used to be, I have never liked brioche used for burgers; this bun was firmer allowing me to grip in one hand and nosh, the other free to throw beer down my neck. The cheese was that super-bad-for-you-but-glorious yellow stuff, the bacon WAS crisp, the beef patties were grown-up and the saucing made the whole thing vibrate with menace.
Loved it. I’m going back.
Mark Garner @Gordomanchester
Cheese Savouries, G. Wienholt Bakery (£1.10 each)
There’s something about nostalgia and things you used to eat when you were a child to bring memories flooding back. When I was around the age of six I used to live off Wienholt’s cheese savouries with some slices of cucumber – the slices of cucumber were token vegetables to tick those good mother boxes my mum tried to live by.
Weinholt’s for those who don’t know is a bakery in Alderley Edge which has been around for over 70 years and is an absolute institution. You will often see people queuing outside for the freshly baked goods even after all these years.
Anyway I digress. This month I was in Alderley Edge and I suddenly got the whiff from Wienholt’s and I was immediately transported into the queue outside to get my nostalgia fix – imagine the scenes from Looney Tunes when Jerry got smelt some cheese.
These little beauties once away from the shop need to be taken home and put in the oven on 200 degrees for around ten minutes to reach optimum taste sensation. They don’t need serving with anything (Sorry mum if you’re reading) just enjoy the buttery flaky pastry case delicately filled with lightly whipped cheese and egg filling with a dash of the 1970’s, absolute perfection.
Georgina Hague @georginahague
Hand-dived scallop with strawberry nahm jim, Podium, Hilton Deansgate (£11.50)
The hand-dived scallop with strawberry nahm jim, sorrel and cucumber (£11.50) at Podium seemed an unlikely combination but it was one of the best dishes, not just of the month, but of the year.
I had no idea what nahm jim was so I checked and disappointingly it wasn’t a Vietnam War veteran from Texas but a sauce made of garlic, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, chillis, and here’ combined with strawberries.
The flavours weren’t disappointing though. They were extraordinarily good. In fact this was a proper 9/10 dish with fine, fine scallops to boot. I would go back every day for a week to grab this if I were passing.
Jonathan Schofield @JonathSchofield
Turkish eggs, Mayhap (£8.40)
I could say that eating humble pie was my dish of the month, but I can think of 115 reasons why I won’t pick that. It’s been a fruitful month, the Hawksmoor Steak and Bone Marrow Pie and Madre’s exceptional course of steak and potatoes deserve honourable mentions.
But, for me my dish of the month is the Turkish Eggs I had in Mayhap. Having lived all but 6 years of my youth in Tyldesley, I’ve always seen the potential of the town. May Hap is a leap in the right direction and something the town can build on. I never thought I’d eat Turkish eggs in here, but I’m so glad I have (and will again).
Garlic & dill greek yoghurt, two perfectly poached eggs, toasted sourdough adorned with gleaming globules of aleppo chilli butter, finally a worthy challenger trying to knock a Dawson’s pie off it’s well held throne. The venue has had many guises over the years and the last time I was in there I was watching the now chart topping Lottery Winners play to a crowd of 40 people but May Hap should stick around and lean into whatever it’s doing, it’s a gem. Especially these Turkish eggs.
Hayden Naughton
Deep fried Mars bar, Six by Nico (part of the £39 'The Chippie' set menu)
I recently tried “The Chippie” menu at Six by Nico. Their six course tasting menu experience for £39 is incredibly good value. The service is informal and friendly so it’s a really approachable introduction to the tasting menu experience if you’re looking to pop your foodie cherry.
There’s an explanatory preamble for each course which, being slightly hard of hearing means a polite nodding whilst having heard absolutely nothing. So this is why I messed up the eating of the otherwise fabulous deep fried Mars bar…
Now to me, a Mars bar is a palm sized oblong. So, I started on the dainty marble sized crunchy orb thinking that would be a sort of aperitif to the large oblong (which later turned out to be the pave) and would contain some kind of liquid chocolate sauce. Nope. It had that amalgamate-tearing tar like quality you expect from a toffee penny in a box of Quality Street, and that’s not a bad thing.
The real star here was the chocolate pave, as light and smooth as a Russian coup. The only difference is that with the pave, the chocolatey goodness just kept going. The Irn Bru sorbet adds a fantastic tangy refreshing refrain from all the indulgence.
I was tempted to make the steak pie course my dish of the month, but the mars bar snatched it as it was one of those special dishes you’ll always remember.
Martyn Pitchford @Pitch_Blend
Rag pudding, The Moorcock (£13.95)
As an Oldhamer exiled over on the borders of leafy Cheshire it’s rare that I get the opportunity to eat my native cuisine – the rag pudding. Now if you’ve never had one – the best way to describe a rag pudding is a kind of upside down soggy topped pie - it tastes a lot better than it sounds, believe me.
A few weeks ago I went for a sunny stroll around Hollingworth Lake in Littleborough – which for those not familiar is very much rag pudding country. We went to a fine pub the Moorcock afterwards for lunch – perched on a hill at the bottom of the Pennines. And lo and behold there it was on the menu.
As I cut in and tasted the chunky steak and kidney chunks wrapped in soft suet pastry, gravy dribbled onto my chips below and I was transported back to my Grandma’s house 25 years ago. Just the job. Coupled with a pint of Vocation beer and panoramic views from the terrace across the valley; I challenge you to find me a finer Northern pub lunch.
Jake Ogden @MancOgden
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