ALLOTMENT bar and restaurant is the latest in a torrent of recent Northern Quarter bar and restaurant openings.
Some may weep about the ruthless gentrification of the area, but Confidential would point to the string of food and drink openings happening right across the city. This isn't a Northern Quarter spring, it's a Manchester spring. Get on board.
Gentrification or not, that's entirely what the Northern Quarter should be about.
We already like Allotment.
Not only because it reminds us of Granpop's shed, with potted vegetation lining the walls and buckets hanging from the ceiling. Not because it has whiffs of varnish or because they've sourced some quality cask beers.
Not just because they're offering fourteen different types of gin, pheasant breast, or buttery corn on the cob on the menus, not even because there's enough room inside to swing a garden hoe.
Allotment
And not because these images are so ruddy handsome - although it does help.
But we're on board with Allotment because the chaps behind the bar restaurant, Gavin Williams and James Kennedy, are two young entrepreneurial sorts who've grafted away in Vodka Revolution for the last four to five years, tucking away enough money to eventually go it alone and open their own place - a true independent.
And gentrification or not, that's entirely what the Northern Quarter should be about. Young upstarts giving it a go. Good luck to 'em.
A full scored review will follow.
Allotment, Dale Street, Northern Quarter.
Allotment
Allotment
Allotment
