SOMETIMES you have a food urge.
With all the Burn’s Night kerfuffle recently, Sleuth (click here) had an urge for haggis. Twitterland and Google revealed very few city centre places that sorted the innards of lamb and beef into edible oatmeal packaged portions.
Haggis mixes in oatmeal, suet, seasoning, and, turns the otherwise useless body parts - known as pluck - into fuel enough to wade freezing Scottish burns on winter days with your kilt billowing around your waist and a deep feeling of regret about the macho lack of undergarments.
One of the few places that did so was Koffee Pot, in Stevenson Square, so Sleuth slipped on his family tartan, pushed a dirk down his sock, slotted some notes in his sporran, and went hunting.
SpecialsKoffee Pot is the non-alcoholic heart of indie Manchester. It's hard to imagine the city without the place. The small interior with diner seating and a ludicrous amount of leaflets and posters is the 2013 equivalent of one of those jazz and beat clubs in the late-fifties, where cappuccinos and bacon sandwiches kept 'the cats' chatting. It could even have been used as a set in Withnail and I, set in 1969.
It's part of the identity of the city. It has perfect boho greasy spoon chic.
So many Manchester bands on the way up, down and sideways have had fried breakfasts, kippers, and mugs of tea there, the owners can't remember all their names.
Anyway this was the deal.
£5.50 for two fried eggs, suitably runny, two potato cakes, suitably chunky, two slabs of lovely, luscious, happily, offally haggis and a green hill of spinach. A cauldron of tea came in at £1.
The result was a loosening of the kilt. At the belt of course.
This was filling stuff but excellent value and with flavours so sturdy you could hold up the Forth Rail Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge with them. The eggs are a nice touch. Sleuth would have preferred swede and turnip rather than spinach but there was nothing wrong with the latter.
The haggis, the main event, was a Macsween classic. Haggis is waste-not-want-not food, it's a 'green' dish hoovering up all the parts that might be thrown away, or rot quickly. Haggis mixes in oatmeal, suet, seasoning, and, turns the otherwise useless body parts - known as pluck - into fuel enough to wade freezing Scottish burns on winter days with your kilt billowing around your waist and a deep feeling of regret about the macho lack of undergarments.
Forget the dainty, effete, enticements of Pret-a-Manger for a week, says Sleuth, and jump into some British heritage (yes, British, the first mention of haggis comes in the 1400s and comes in a Lancashire recipe).
Koffee Pot, 21 Hilton St, City, M1 1JJ. (Click here)
Follow Sleuth on twitter @mcrsleuth
Perfect boho
