Our writers and staff choose their favourite meals from April
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 April.
Carbonara pizza, Wood Fire Smoke, Wilmslow (£12)
While the likes of Rudy’s, 80-strong brass band and baton-twirlers in tow, keeps on its march to doughy domination, Wood Fire Smoke quietly make sublime Neapolitan pizzas.
In my past life as ‘someone who doesn’t like eggs’ I’d have nervously sidestepped this on a menu, especially when its alternative base lacks the safety net of a tomato sauce. Well, where once I was blind now I can see.
Wood Fire Smoke’s carbonara pizza is an oil painting of golden egg yolk with swathes of salty pancetta and tangy shards of pecorino. The only thing better than looking at it is eating it. In its day job as a pasta sauce the key to carbonara is its simplicity, and here - lounging on top of a bed of delicately sweet double zero dough - it proves just as uncomplicated, unembellished and unbeatable.
It’s what I’d call a ‘four-slice folder’, where you can carve it up in quarters and basically shovel the thing into your face before you know what’s hit you. Just be sure to keep the crusts ‘til last, and dip them in the swirl of refreshing basil aioli (£1.60).
I love a well decked-out menu as much as the next person, but can sometimes find the tyranny of choice can weigh heavy. The next time I visit Wood Fire Smoke, I know what I’m ordering.
A pizza worthy of a street parade.
David Adamson @davidadamson123
House flatbread with mushroom, spenwood and truffle yolk, Another Hand (£8.50)
Pizzas. Fuck ‘em.
Hot bread, sloppy, bottled tomato passata, half a quid’s worth of odd stuff thrown on them and some challenged mozzarella, shoved in a raging hot oven with a pitch fork. God almighty. Not my game.
Then I’m in Another Hand, the runaway success of ConfidentialGuides.com, waiting for a pal. I order the house flatbread with mushrooms, truffled egg yolk and Spenmore. The latter is a ewe’s milk cheese reminiscent of pecorino, but a bit more feminine. It’s grated over, leaving a first snow of the winter covering of salty, sexy flavour lifting the gently dealt-with polyspore mushrooms, which are bound with a truffle paste and laid across a beautifully soft, fluffy flatbread.
I cut the side-plate sized disc into quarters realising that the truffled egg yolk was hiding in the middle. Each slice gets a dollop. Anyone who has done the pilgrimage to Eneko Atxa’s three-star Michelin Azurmendi outside of Bilbao will recognise it. Eneko cooks his by injecting hot truffle oil into the yolk, serving it soft and intact on a small silver spoon.
This flat bread is indeed pizza as art dusted with psilocybin. I loved it. It’s a trip.
Mark Garner @GordoManchester
Breast of chicken with gnocchi, spinach and a champagne sauce, The Wishing Well, Didsbury (£16.95)
Talk about posh comfort food. This whole breast of chicken served with perfectly poached gnocchi, wilted spinach and a creamy champagne sauce is the definition of decadent pub grub if I ever did have some.
The chicken breast is left with the skin on for maximum flavour, seasoned just right with a helping hand from a generous portion of gnocchi floating blissfully on a pool of champagne sauce. It’s moreish, it’s rich, but above all it’s perfectly balanced and leaves you substantially full, as do all of the other dishes at The Wishing Well. I’ll be back for more once the food coma has worn off…
Harley Young @Harley__Young
Blood orange meringue bar, Isca, Levenshulme (£4)
I've never been asked to do a dish of the month, but just so you know, I'm the fat guy that eats everything you see on Instagram. I had a seminal experience this month: I had the dessert I would put on my 'death row' dining plans.
Wine shops usually intimidate me - I'm not on the same level of wine literacy as my peers. However, when I see a tin of gordal olives in the window of Isca, I am tempted in.
What I wasn't expecting was a tiny kitchen/dessert counter beckoning me in with smells of splendour. That's when I see it, the 'Blood orange meringue bar' (£4.00). I found myself saying "Could I have one of those please?" before I actually knew what it was.
It wasn't my usual sweet choice; I prefer orange to blood orange, I prefer cream to meringue and I prefer pubs to bars. The perfectly charred top offset the delicately sweet cloud-like nature of the meringue. I'll cut to the chase, it was outstanding. The three layers combine into a communion of sweetness. I often hear people complain that desserts are too sweet, this not only walked that line, it strutted along it.
It’s the type of thing that makes me want to go back, take friends and eat everything they have to offer. Isca are good people, the type of place any community should crave. If you make it past the dessert counter, you're a stronger person than me.
Hayden Naughton @HaydenNaughton
Shallot and fennel focaccia, Climat (£4.50)
A recent family visit to Climat involved the passé small plate sharing, which presented a surprising treat in the shallot and fennel focaccia. It’s not something I would have ordered, with so many other tantalising things on the menu, so I’m grateful someone else had chosen it as it was a fantastically simple celebration of good ingredients combined with great skill. Lightly oiled and perfectly seasoned, with tremendous texture. My tip for Climat would be to make sure you try what sounds like the most boring thing on the menu because it will sneak up and slap your taste buds silly.
Martyn Pitchford @Pitch_Blend
Goat curd ravioli with pork offal ragu, Higher Ground (£19)
Admittedly, on first glance, this could be the school dinners cottage pie, but it’s more a farm to fork mission statement. Somewhere in there are pillowy ravioli of goat’s curd. Daringly they’ve been smothered in pork offal ragu, giving the dish oodles of extra tang. Not quite the innards reek of a French andouillette sausage, say, but the presence of minced liver, heart, kidney and lung pushes it beyond your regular bolognese.
It represents chef Joseph Otway’s commitment at his self-styled ‘agriculturally focused bistro and bar’ to using every viable bit of the pig. It’s not just any old whole hog, mind. This is an acorn-fed, sustainably reared Large Black/Tamworth cross from Jane’s Farm near Nantwich. Since Higher Ground’s February opening the menu has featured shoulder with grain and mushroom porridge and after this pasta dish we shared a £45 platter of aged pork steak with mustard greens from HG’s Cinderwood market garden. Pick of all the pork, though, was the uncouth offal.
Neil Sowerby @AntonEgoManc
Pork chop, Higher Ground, City centre (£45)
The second outing for Higher Ground this week.
Whimsical humorous poet Ogden Nash wrote a poem called 'The Pig'. It went: 'The pig, if I am not mistaken/ Supplies us sausage, ham and bacon/ Let others say his heart is big/ I call it stupid of the pig.'
The pork dish at Higher Ground is not stupid, anything but, instead it's one of the finest slices of meaty joy in the city. The flesh is almost delicate, perfectly timed, there's the rich and juicy fat and a cracking crackling. It's puts pork on a par with with the best beef in the city. Higher Ground as is obvious on this page has hit the...er...ground...er...running and occupies...er...the higher ground. All the dishes are superb on our tasting sessions but if you are a carnivore then this pork is something you must rush to eat if you have the readies.
It's £45 which seems ludicrously expensive but think of this as a Chateaubriand and, as advertised, it is for two people. And even for two people hard to finish.
Jonathan Schofield @JonathSchofield
Parmigiana di Zucchine, Cibus, Levenshulme (£15)
I’ve got an absolute hatred towards courgettes. I find them tasteless and pointless. I’ve never had a dish that makes me want to eat courgette, and in my eyes there is no enjoyment in eating a vegetable that just turns to grey mush when cooked. But this is where Cibus have changed my mind. I got to try their new spring menu and they have now converted me to a passionate love of courgettes.
Their Parmigiana di Zucchine was layered thinly sliced courgette nestled between sweet, melted layers of mozzarella smothered in a slow cooked rich tomato and basil sauce which was the perfect partnership. Each slice of courgette had a point to it - for the first time in my life I actually know what a courgette tastes of. The dish was finished off with a shaving of parmesan and, most importantly, two pieces of toasted bread for cleaning up the plate to within an inch of its life.
Georgina Harrington Hague @georginahague
Read next - Manchester restaurant & bar deals: April 2023
Read again - April Food and Drink round-up: Nonna’s Pasta, artisan hot chocolate and more
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