THIS was good. The food was well-crafted, exquisite to look at and full of flavour.
My main of Texel lamb was magnificent, slow cooked, fibrous, rich as Croesus, as finely executed as the heroine's nose in a Jane Austen novel.
Kaleido, the restaurant that sits above the National Football Museum, was on top form.
Paul Riley, the chef, was on top form.
So why were there so few guests in the restaurant?
More of that later, but really this food deserved a far larger audience. The deal was two courses for £14.50 and three courses for £19. It was a steal.
Kaleido, very special menu
First up there was an appetiser which was a little thriller. It was made up of scrambled egg as ice cream, a wafer of smoked bacon and a dainty purée of chives. All lovely.
Little pot: just like thisIt had drama too, coming in a heavy little pot you expected to grow legs and run away. When you lifted the lid, a clean aroma of wood and earth wafted out that put me much in mind of sitting in a Sami tent several years ago in December. We were two hundred miles beyond the Arctic Circle, being made to drink aquavit, with loads of wet and smelly huskies sprawled about the place.
That may sound unpleasant. It was anything but, it felt the essence of natural, the essence of comforting. As was the appetiser.
Scambled egg ice cream
A first course of oxtail risotto with bone marrow parsley was just as good. It was crazy with oxtail flavours, the rice was stickily perfect, the bone marrow was greasily wrong but so very right at the same time. Top stuff.
Oxtail risotto, bone marrow
Another starter of bouillebaise was delicacy defined. Complete with requisite lumps of fish, a judicious use of oil, and soft persistent fishiness, it was excellent. The only doubt was over the beetroot bread, which looked frightening, and smacked of gimmickry.
Bouillebaise
My main of Texel lamb was magnificent, slow cooked, fibrous, rich as Croesus, as finely executed as a heroine's nose in a Jane Austen novel. I adored this dish. I particularly adored the haggis that came with it and sang songs and danced jigs with the swede and the turnip. The whole collection of lovely flavours had substance as well as style.
Texel lamb by the way, is baa-baa from the North Sea island of Texel off the Dutch coast. Sea air and salty meadows give the lamb flesh a natural seasoning.
Texel lamb
The salmon was as well presented as the other courses and had a lovely fresh sheen on the skin. The samphire, fennel and vanilla, mingled to very good effect in a confit that was extraordinarily refined.
Salmon
Only one of the two puddings need detain us.
The caramelised apple tart with tonka bean ice cream broke beautifully to reveal a succulent, warm, apple interior. The ice cream helped out. The plate it arrived upon, was cleaned so thoroughly by us diners it looked like it had never been used. An exceptional dessert.
Apple tart
A rhubarb and prosecco jelly, with clotted cream and honey madelaine was overburdened by a lumpen amount of jelly at its base. That was a shame as it let down a wafer of rhubarb suffused with prosecco on top. The wafer was as good anything in the other dishes.
Rhubarb
Clearly Paul Riley has sorted any problems in the kitchen in terms of delivering quality.
This lunch time deal - maybe for a time it should be extended into the evening too - is a real star in Manchester at present. If you have a little spare cash and feel like an elevated dining occasion in more than one sense, give it a go.
So why is the place so quiet?
Maybe fine dining over the National Football Museum seems a strange proposition to punters - but Kaleido has a separate entrance and identity, so the quietness shouldn't necessarily be anything to do with that.
Is the problem that you have to scoot up five or six levels in a lift to access the bar and restaurant? The views are good but they're not those of Cloud 23. Maybe Kaleido is too high but not high enough?
I can't believe that's the reason either.
In fact I think all the above issues are surmountable. What Kaleido has to work at is atmosphere, it has to live up to its name.
This is a taken from the word Kaleidoscope, and is an oblique reference to the many colours and creeds of football, to the game's global appeal. The restaurant and bar here are steel and concrete and glass, the opposite of football's cosmopolitan exuberance. It's like one of those new stadiums that need the crowd to animate it.
Kaleido cries out for softening colours and fabrics. At present there are ugly gossamer silver curtains like cobwebs over Miss Haversham's wedding table in Great Expectations, they need to be replaced with something plush and lush and maybe heavy and velvet.
The booths add to starkness of the place. Instead of white leather with the odd coloured stud, Kaleido should make features of them, have them re-covered in scarlet or royal blues. Plants should be introduced. Big ones.
Given the overwhelming green glass walls, I reckon Kaleido should turn itself into a bawdy, hothouse, modernist bordello in the sky; lift the mood not dampen it with an operating theatre atmosphere. The managers might want to take a look at the scarlet and black interior of Lounge Ten on Tib Lane, see how it holds people in its moody embrace.
Kaleido - glass attack
The National Football Museum is going to smash its visitor number targets in its first year - click here. It might want to deflect some of the dosh upstairs, help out the catering operator Kudos. The food deserves support from the decor because on the evidence of this visit it's Premier League. I reiterate, go, foodies go.
One final thing. Kaleido needs to repair the door to the kitchen. All through the meal I thought a woman was being tortured. In the end it turned out to be a haunted door that automatically screams as staff enter the kitchen.
Of course, that could become a tourist attraction in its own right.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield
ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
Kaleido, above the National Football Museum, Urbis Building,
Cathedral Gardens, City, M4 3BG. 0161 871 8160
Rating: 14.5/20 (Remember venues are rated against the best examples of their kind so check out the box below)
Food: 8.5/10 (appetiser 8.5, oxtail 8, bouillebaise 8, lamb 8.5, salmon 8, apple tart 8.5, rhubarb 7)
Service: 3.5/5
Ambience: 2.5/5
