Category: Pubs. Score 13.5/20 (Full breakdown below. Venues are compared with similar venues and measured against the best examples in their category.)
DUTTONS is all about the interior and the terrace. The former has all the sturdy virtues of timber fixtures and fittings pubs old and new share, while the latter has views of Manchester Town Hall - a whole landscape of Gothic architecture, two hundred yards away. Just watching the play of light across that beauty justifies chewing a pint of an evening.
Chain operators have tripped over themselves opening and closing here for ten years. Duttons will not fail.
Otherwise the exterior of Duttons is from the worst period of British architecture, the 1980s, when Britain lost its bottle and decided inoffensive was best. The result was offensively bland buildings such as the Commerical Union Building Duttons occupies. It's shamed by the Town Hall.
But, as already stated, inside all is forgiven.
You can sit comfortably in booths, sway on high seats, or go for trad tables and chairs at reasonable heights. There's leather and plush and comforting woods. The artwork down to the loos shows scenes of Manchester, some bad, some really good, the Toy Tram photo is excellent. A wall piece including cotton thread and reels with a redcoat's jacket refers, I suppose, to the Turkey Red dyeworks in Blackley which used to give the British Army its scarlet uniform in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Good feature that.
Good staff, good interior
The terrace has giant fun hogsheads to sit within and of course there are heaters out there too.
Design-wise its untacky, neat, pleasantly inoffensive, except for one horror.
A big hogshead barrel to sit within
Please dear JW Lees, fine local brewery and Duttons owners, get rid of those dreadful plastic box hedges. This is Albert Square you know, Manchester's premier address? It's not the cafe section of a Vending Machine Convention in Barnsley.
Duttons and the hedges that never need trimming
The food is good standard pub food and the prices reflect that. Over several visits my pick has been the oven baked cod at £12.95. This is about as expensive as it gets. The beautifully flaking cod comes with mussels, peas, creamy sauce and a good mash.
Cod and mussels and mash
A 'Nibbles' starter of maple glazed sausages (£4.95) was a let down with the sausages not given a crispy enough skin while the fatty, loose bacon that wrapped them made the whole err on the side of repellent. If there had been a maple glaze I missed it. Another starter of fishcakes (£5.95) was better, good texture, strong flavours, nicely put together.
Horrible pigs in slack blankets
A steak sandwich (£8.95) worked well with a lovely Stilton base that gave it that added blue cheese kick plus there was an enlivening red onion chutney.
Shame that my dining partner had asked for the sandwich without the Stilton, but the pub staff immediately offered a replacement or a free pudding.
Winsome Eton Mess
We had the free pudding. The subsequent Eton Mess (£4.95) was a suitable overload of sweetness incorporating goodly amounts of ice cream, Chantilly cream, fruit and meringue.
Previous visits have included sampling pub staples such as the fish and chips (£9.95) which provided a crisp batter and again well-timed flesh.
There's a predictable drinks range, a pub drink range. Lees Bitter or the new MPA (Manchester Pale Ale) and a wine list that never pushes the limits - a shame given Lees owns Willoughbys wine merchants. On one visit though a New Zealander Sauvignon Blanc, Wild Rock, did a good sharp gooseberry job for us.
It's an infamous goose
Service on every occasion has been attentive and concerned. Clearly there's a good training programme here and strong leadership. The steak sandwich error lay with the kitchen rather than the waiting staff.
There is nothing ground-breaking about Duttons. Sometimes I feel with the food (and certainly those hideous plastic hedges) there might be too much of a suburban feel to the place, that Duttons Albert Square could be on a canal somewhere in the suburbs, that it's not 'city' enough.
But then I also think given the place's evident popularity that might be just me, an inveterate city centre user, forgetting that most of the varied audience - young and old, male and female - comes from those places.
It should also be remembered that this site has usually been about unending, consistent failure. Chain operators have tripped over themselves opening and closing for ten years. Duttons will not fail here: in a little over four months it's already an established success.
Indeed with this place and the refurbished Joseph Holts pub, Ape and Apple, and Jack Sprats on John Dalton Street plus the far more upmarket Albert Square Chop House, the Armenian Taverna and Tampopo, Manchester's main civic area has developed a very welcome local accent. Only the pisspoor Slug and Lettuce belongs to a grim chain. There's something pleasing about that local dominance.
One last thing. I'm arranging a skip to arrive at 5am next Tuesday. Going to guerrilla assault those plastic hedges. Bin them. Who's in?
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter @JonathSchofield or connect via Google+
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Duttons, 2-10 Albert Square, City centre, M2 6LW 2DS. 0161 241 6849
Rating: 13.5/20 (remember venues are rated against the best examples of their type - see yellow box below)
Food: 6.5/10 (sausages 5, steak sandwich 7, fishcakes 7, oven-baked cod 7.5, fish and chips 7, Eton Mess 6.5)
Service: 4/5
Ambience: 3/5
Steak sandwich
Fishcakes
