MANCHESTER'S full of burgeoning bar groups.
There's Living Ventures at the slick suited end, there's Americana-loving Black Dog growing by the month, and there's expansionist music-led Trof exploding all over the city.
Later in the year there'll be a 600 capacity live venue opening behind the dining and bar area in Gorilla - in the Green Room's former theatre space. When that happens we already have the winner of best food in a concert venue in Manchester, should that ever be an award category of course.
The latest Trof, Gorilla, occupies the site of Green Room, the worthy theatre and live venue, that folded last year with scarcely anyone outside the art scene ever realising.
The in-house Trof design team has taken the uncompromising shape and character of a railway arch holding up Oxford Road Station and done a proper job on it.
In a perverse but pleasing way the new plank lining of the ceiling reflects the lovely 1960s' woodwork of the station above. The planks are taken from various demolished buildings, schools, hospitals, lunatic asylums - I think that's what I was told. The wood wrap warms the space and turns it into a cosy den.
Planked and vaulted
Trof has always been well-known for it's booze, but the food is now getting noticed.
The old Salutation pub behind All Saints on Higher Chatham Street is also part of the business and bakes the bread for the group. Attention to detail is boosting the whole dining experience.
The menu is - let's coin an oxymoronic phrase - 'world urban rustic'. Everybody's up to it. Home Sweet Home's food is similar, as described in last week's review, although Trof''s is better.
The menu voguishly mixes English breakfasts, butternut squashes, American style burgers, kebabs and halloumi and then presents them on wooden trenchers that would have been recognised by John Dee, the alchemist who lived in Manchester over 400 years ago.
It's tough boned food but is beautifully cooked.
Feast your eyes on this gorgeously fit bird below. What a fair fowl.
Fair fowl
That's a half chicken (£12), properly browned, then crusted with thyme and enriched with lemon, garlic and rock salt. Cutting into the bird revealed white, moist come-hither flesh parting gently and delivering bags of flavour and lovely aromas.
It was a sensory joy all round with the thyme perfume putting me in mind of a long-ago ramble through the Sierra de Guadarrama, north of Madrid on a May afternoon, crushing thyme as I walked. Call me Monsieur Proust.
The salsa verde that came with the cluck-cluck was good as well, but the aioli was better.
I was dining with fellow food writer Neil Sowerby and we'd already sampled a proper broth (£4.50) with home-made sourdough before I'd got excited by the bird. The sourdough from the aforementioned Salutation was 10/10, the broth laden with bacon, lentils, carrots, onions, 'Uncle Tom Cobley and all' (as my ancient gran used to say), was very butch in a very good way.
Butch broth
Sowerby for mains had been taken by and smitten with a fine chicken chermoula kebab (£10). The chicken came rubbed with 'African' spices cooked, skewered and accompanied by harissa yoghurt. There was also a lentil, tomato and green salad with, of course, flat bread.
The Wednesday we went was National Fowl Day so it felt right to both eat chicken. And eating chicken in a gorilla made us smile as well.
Kebab joy
Sowerby seemed very happy with the kebabs, although that could have been down to the bottles of Jaipur ale he was necking. Jaipur comes from one of Britain's finest micro-breweries, Thornbridge in Bakewell. I joined in with Jaipur towards the end of the meal and didn't regret it.
Jaipur makes you purr maybe even pair
I remember collecting one of the reviews of this beer from an ale-aficionado site which read: 'Caramel soaked fruit aromas, rich bread flavour like shortcake and biscotti. Floral honey-like scents bridge into supple tea-like notes with fresh cut grass, citrus, and pine.'
Dismantle that and you sort of get there. Jaipur is a lovely mellow Indian pale ale with lots of character.
Neil Sowerby enjoying Jaipur
Pudds, and we dived into a knickerbocker glory (£6.50) and a brown sugar cheesecake (£4.50).
I can't resist a knickerbocker glory. If I see one on a menu it's like seeing the next book in the Fifty Shades of Grey sequence for seemingly 84% of the female population. I just have to get it.
This wasn't the best version I've had. It was too nutty; hazelnuts had been scattered around with the profligacy of Bob Diamond drawing up his own bonus scheme. I prefer emphasis on fruit and cream. On sweetness over sweetness and less harsh crunch.
The cheesecake was described as "good but too caramelly, on the chewy side" by Sowerby.
Nutty knickerbocker, chewy cheesecake
Overall though the 'world urban rustic' food at Trof was way better than expected. Thinking back over that chicken, broth and sourdough my mouth's watering.
Later in the year there'll be a 600 capacity live venue opening behind the dining and bar area in Gorilla - in the Green Room's former theatre space.
When that happens, and should it ever be an award category, we already have the winner of Best Food in a Concert Venue in Manchester.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield
ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
Gorilla, 54-56 Whitworth Street West, City. M1 5WW http://www.thisisgorilla.com
Rating: 15.5/20 (please read the scoring system in the box below)
Food: 7.5/10
Service: 4/5
Ambience: 4/5
Gorilla movement
Gorilla interior
Gorilla - more wood
