WHAT’S in it for 2013?
2013 is going to be the fourth year of recession. Or at least a period of little or no growth throughout the UK. Because I’m such a cheerful sort I believe this is going to carry on for another three or four years.
The so-called 'Y' generation must be getting used to it, the mid-twenties to mid-thirties especially, meanwhile the empty nesters are settling down and cutting their cloth accordingly. And it does seem that it's the cloth that's suffering and not the food.
Confidential is looking forward to these guys coming into the city. There is another serious play going on very much under the radar, which if it comes off will see a non-British arrival from the left field with multiple starred restaurants in their stable. (Eh, I don’t know about that. Editor)
Here in Manchester we are seeing retailer after retailer close their doors, even banks moving out of behemoth buildings into smaller units, having fleeced the pants off the little people and destroyed themselves in the process.
And what is moving into their space?
Restaurants.
In the case of the old Midland/HSBC Bank on King Street, the cheeky chappie, Jamie Oliver and his mate Gennaro Contaldo, in the case of the old Emporio Armani, L'Entrecote - the main picture above shows Gordo grinning with Gennaro Contaldo.
In fact in terms of bars and restaurants we’ve had a busy couple of years. Neighborhood, The Oast House, Albert Square, L’Entrecote, Australasia, Solita, Salvi's, Aumbry, Almost Famous Burgers, 63 Degrees, Gorilla, Bakerie, Slice, Blue Angel and on and on and on – and that’s only in the city centre.
Neighbourhood's cracking salmon steak
Organisation, tactics, strategy
The big, organised teams, such as Living Ventures, have decided that the way to growth is through more outlets, well run and managed, taking the business away from the poorly capitalised independents who only had to open their doors in 1998 and deliver 'modern British with a twist' to be full most of the week.
Unless the independents food is stunning and they learn to stand up to the mid-market chains with their marketing, we might see a large number of indies fail by 2014. Especially if they get caught using the term ‘with a twist’, now a chef cop-out for ‘I'm baffled as to what to do next’, or ‘I'm burnt out and want to spend more time with my family’.
Well please, go home and stay home.
The large organisations are plotting and scheming how to grow, not just survive; they will do this, having finally realized that it's not all about Conran's (for it was he) ‘crispy chilli squid’.
The cunning Oast House from the cunning Living Venture's group
Today it’s all about catering to a Mancunia that is dribbling at the mouth every Saturday and Sunday morning watching the likes of James Martin and Simon Rimmer cooking food that is a mile away from the formulaic steaks with a choice of four, not terribly nicely done, sauces. Alongside the aforementioned chilli squid, we’re all sick of yet another bland fillet of farmed sea bass laid on top of something green, followed by a stunningly average crème brulee. The good operations will have to start dismantling their menus and coming up with something new.
We have, in the North West, millions of diners who are now TV savvy about food: they are using the internet to get the ingredients and learn how to cook. Why will they put up with paying for boring badly cooked food in a restaurant?
The first team to upgrade and cater properly to this huge market will be the winners.
Content not 'names'
By the way, our diners don’t want the southern brands-as-chefs here.
That was tried back in 2001/2 with Marco Pierre White, Gary Rhodes, Raymond Blanc, Nico Ladenis and others thinking they could just open, appear once propped up by a London PR company and bugger off back down south. They waited for us northern punters to fill their bank accounts. Well, we are punters, good ones as it happens. But not mug punters. We know what good food and service is. We don’t like to be patronised.
The North West is an area with a bigger GDP than Denmark. Our local raw ingredients outshine anything the Danes have. That feller from Noma is having to scrape lichen off the rocks on the seashore. Even our pigs have better personalities. The difference between the growers now and the growers in 1998 is astonishing.
I have, in the last four years, eaten cheese, pork, venison, lobster, crab, wild sea trout, black pudding, bacon, lamb and beef that would stand alongside anything the world has to offer. And let's not forget Reg’s ducks and chickens. Ok, Ok, the tomatoes are a bit shit compared to San Sebastian, but you get where I am coming from. We are seeing the local chefs using the ingredients, so what’s next?
Aumbry's beautiful egg and black pudding dish
What is needed is to start a major upswing in the quality of cooking.
Where is our Wolseley, or Wiltons? Two London restaurants that show serving simple, great British food on a seasonal basis creates sell out crowds. Where is the terroir? Real French cooking, changing everyday.
Where is the Dorchester Grill, another British hotel restaurant that caters for the whole family, with young Jimmy being offered his own menu, dad getting a Grouse, and granny, happily munching away at her filleted plaice without P Diddy blasting down her ear drums? And the greatest shoestring fried potatoes you could ever want. Oh, and roast beef off a trolley… Robert Owen Brown at the Mark Addy shows what can be done when he gets stuck into proper game dishes.
Pheasant surprise at the Mark Addy
Personally, I’ll marry the first women who can cook me roast chicken, perfectly moist, crispy skin, bread sauce shimmering with a finish of cream. Duck fat roast potatoes, gravy with a touch of red wine. PROPER STUFFING.
If she'll have me. She might tell me to bugger off, mind you.
It took four hundred years to get a roast chicken right.
It needs no twisting. Why should it be modern? The chef who can make real gravy, light or heavy, banging with flavour, is the man I want. Not a bloody ‘jus’ by the way, another word that needs sticking up someone’s bottom. It’s a sauce guys, just read Escoffier, he packaged up four generations of cooking. Very few of you can outclass the master.
Spanish recovery
Spanish. My God, how Spain has come on over the past thirty years. They have been digging out their pre-Franco cook books, chatting to their grans and serving food that makes angels sing.
Here in Manchester, our Spanish restaurants need to think again. London yet again is showing the way forward and our lot need to go and visit, or at the very least, read Jose Pizzaro and Claudia Roden’ s latest books.
Pizarro, 195 Bermondsey St, London, is astonishing. Eat Jose’s Iberico pork presa, Jerusalem artichokes and pear puree. Then tell me you’re cooking Spanish food. By the way, you don’t have to go all the way to London. Get across to Liverpool and eat the paella negro with squid at Lunya. Then tear your hearts out.
Curiously that byword for rotten Spanish food La Tasca is starting to stand out. It has come alive after a management buy out and the Editor and I visited a few days ago. This chain to my mind is the most improved in the UK. Well bloody done.
I guarantee success for anyone either upgrading their Spanish restaurant or opening from fresh as long as they get in a quality chef committed to real Spanish grub.
Italian and Indian escape
Italian. Oh dear me. There are restaurants still open (and opening) that have grilled chicken breast (as dry as that little bone they leave on the end) with garlic butter. You are taking the piss.
Then there is Marcello Distefano at San Carlo and Cicchetti, who drags me over to Alba, making me sniff wine, eat fried eggs with white truffle and stand in the kitchen of a one Michelin starred chef in a restaurant hanging off a mountain, trying fourteen different ways of delivering pasta with spinach and pine nuts, sprinkled with fourteen locally farmed cheeses. For four hours. Marcello knows what he's doing and knows how to please customers - as does Maurizio Salvi at Salvi's in the Corn Exchange, another man who knows a thing or two about authenticity.
The beautiful tuna carpaccio at Cicchetti
I am predicting a huge shake up of the Italian restaurants this coming year. Jamie makes me laugh; he is forever faffing about with his kitchen in the garden, with mouth-watering dish after dish on TV. Then he gives us that sloppy bag of farmed sea bass at his Manchester restaurant and let's down perhaps the most beautiful interior in the city.
The lazy sod.
So-called 'ethnic food', particularly sub continent Indian and even more particularly, Punjab food, needs to step up to the plate as well. Again, the London chefs are showing how it is done and being awarded stars for their efforts. To be fair, it does appear that with restaurants like Sanminis, in Ramsbottom, we are starting to see traction. Zouk is shining as well.
So Mr Restaurateurs, step up or step off.
Chicken lollipops - Zouk
Go west, young proprietor
Whilst saying that I reckon the big boys will be whupping the independents’ bottoms next year, that is not entirely true. As I said, we are short of money.
So, we are seeing a new phenomenon: American trailer trash cooking.
Over in the Northern Quarter, food as huge, ‘dirty’, one-course, queue-up grunge has arrived. Burgers from places such as Almost Famous and Solita, are the star of the show, tables turned over six times a night. Dogs are in, sticky sauces, suspect cuts of beef (Jacobs Ladder, made up by Mark Hix) are here but still need to be cooked properly. Mostly this means getting meat off a BBQ and on to a plate for under a tenner. Excellent news.
Street food is going to get better and better Gordo hopes, but it needs to hit critical mass with quality as well as variety. It’s coming. Like a train. This writer would like to see four or five trucks with containers on the back, parked up illegally selling South East Asian, Chinese, Punjabi, even Lancashire food to the punters coming out of pubs and clubs. (Steamed Bury Black Pudding with mustard anyone?) Illegally - but keep ‘em moving, Twitter can tell us where to go.
Pop-ups and supper clubs will multiply in 2013. Whilst we are on that subject, Monica and Anika’s Spice Club; what a night that was. More please.
Michelin pumped
And finally, what of that elusive Michelin star?
2013 will see the start of a campaign on three fronts to win one. Living Bacon have enticed Aiden Bryne to the city centre with a space in Manchester House, courtesy of Mike Ingall, the gaffer of Spinningfields, who is turning an architectural sow’s ear into a silk purse. Byrne’s new place will apparently, be named TheRestaurant @ ManchesterHouse.
That name must have taken a few bottles of bourbon in The Alchemist eh, lads?
Aiden is newly invigorated having stumbled across Eneko Atxo’s Azurmendi, in Bilbao. I was there a few weeks after Aiden, it had two stars at the time. My first prediction for this place came good in November when it was a awarded a third Michelin star - congratulations to Eneko. My second is that it will be a contender for best restaurant in the world. I mean, Noma? Lichen off rocks?
Inside out truffled egg at Azurmendi
Next there is a homegrown North Western champion of fine-dining, Simon Rogan, from the two-starred L’Enclume in Cartmel. Michael Magrane, the chirpy general manager of the Midland Hotel, has talked Rogan into taking over both The French and The Colony restaurants in the building. The former world famous establishment has been sliding down a grubby black hole for years, so this is excellent news. The Colony used to supply the king of roast beef lunches, so let's hope this is an opportunity to do proper, clever British. Hats off to him.
Rogan and Magrane
Confidential is looking forward to these guys coming into the city. There is another serious play going on very much under the radar, which if it comes off will see a non-British arrival from the left field with multiple starred restaurants in their stable. (Eh, I don’t know about that. Editor)
Exciting times.
The quality of the training alone from the two confirmed arrivals will see Manchester’s culinary scheme become, dare we say it, world class. This should bring more people to Manchester as well, and not just for football.
Michelin punctures?
But beware, all that glitters…may well not be there in a couple of years time.
It has been reported that the Michelin Guides are supported with a £12m injection every year, this from the French aristocratic family who still own a controlling share in The Michelin Tyre Company. They are going to lose that control soon, then the bean counters will take charge. Let’s hope they are fans of beans in cassoulet as well. Otherwise they may believe there are better ways of spending twelve mill.
But look on the bright side, Gordo would step in. Probably. Three Gordo Stars anyone?
You can follow Gordo on Twitter here @GordoManchester
Salut a 2013
