DON'T get me wrong, I like Kosmonaut, I really do... but as a bar.
I like anywhere that has exposed pipes and brickwork, bars, apartments, fireplaces, Jewsons. Also anywhere that bungs a ping-pong table in the basement bar is just cricket with me (I once sold our dining table just to fit a full-sized ping-pong table into our old student house).
The NQ bar attitude is not necessarily rude or off’ish, you just gain a sense that if you don’t like it then you can lump it. Because they reckon they’ll be busy regardless.
So when we finally managed to find some seats (coupled with a wonky table) on this particularly busy evening, I really did want to enjoy the food. It wasn’t that it was notably bad, it’s just that when you’re doing a review, pretty much the last way you want to start the food experience is like this. "Are you doing any food, please?" "Depends what you want mate."(ouch).
Kosmonaut
The two bartenders then took it in turns to unceremoniously list all the items on the menu that were indeed, off the menu. Pizzas were a no, as were the steaks, half of the hot dogs and burgers were also off, as was the mac‘n’cheese side. So is there anything I can have? “Yeah there’s still quite a lot on there you can have” came the response, “But there’s just a lot that you can’t.”
Cosmic
Mind you, they were pleasant about it, but pleasant doesn’t award me a side of mac’n’cheese. The NQ bar attitude is not necessarily rude or off’ish, you just gain a sense that if you don’t like it then you can lump it. Because they reckon they’ll be busy regardless.
The menu was decidedly meaty: steaks (if they have any), burgers, chilli, chicken, hot dogs, ribs and a large selection of pizzas (once again, if they have any). We opted for the BBQ big boy ribs (£9.50), Texas chilli beef brisket (£5.50), classic 1/2lb burger (£8) with a side of rocket and Parmesan salad (£2), all with lots and lots of fries.
The ribs with rocket and parmesan salad
The ribs were abundant and slid off the bone but the accompanying Evan Williams bourbon BBQ sauce was a tad dark, gloopy and overpowering which made the dish sickly and difficult to polish off. The burger was a cracker though (and it needs to be with MCR’s sudden obsession with the humble meat patty and resulting competition), it was all the things a burger should be: large, juicy and ever so unhealthy. My companion’s requested mayonnaise never made it to the table, which I was secretly quite pleased about. Mayo is an abomination.
Classic 1/2lb burger and fries
The Texas chilli brisket, served in a mug with three dwarfish buns, was decent but dullish. However, this could be counteracted by filling the dwarfish buns with chilli and pretending that you had a gargantuan hand.
Texas chilliThe rocket and parmesan salad was dry, lifeless and came in a bowl that looked like something Oliver Twist may turn his nose up at. Please Sir, can I have no more.
Dessert, much like half of the menu, was a no go. Have you finished serving? “Yeah I’m afraid the kitchen has closed.” But it’s only half past nine, “You could have a liqueur coffee or cocktail” came the response. Well unless you can turn a cocktail into a sticky toffee pudding than that doesn’t really suffice.
Cocktails aka dessert
Drinks-wise the bar fares much better, and this is a bar after all, a New York-styled bar (I’m not sure when this fixation with emulating New Yorkie bars came to Manchester? Kosmonaut, Black Dog, Neighbourhood, NoHo, Kahlua, every other new bar that rears its head. And what is a bloody 'speakeasy'? In 2013 anyway).
With nearly 50 bottled beers from home-grown to Icelandic, Thornbridge and Flying Dog’s IPA on draught, fans of the Richard Geres will be more than content. The drinks menu has an eclectic and colourful selection of cocktails with some for under a fiver, including the wackily named gin-based grapefruity Totes Amazeballs. Inquiring with the bartender I found this to be named after some new-fangled saying from that vacuous fool-fest TOWIE - I hoped it was tongue in cheek.
Still any cocktail that comes in for under a fiver can be called whatever it likes, I’d buy Donkey Bollocked Leper Drivel for under a fiver.
Ping-pong
Downstairs they’ve embraced the Old Smoke’s trendy ping-pong bar craze, from those Sloane Rangers in Chelsea to the hipster-douchebags in Holborn, they’re all pinging it about. Akin to your All Stars and Dog Bowlers, Kosmonaut is bringing something else to the table (sorry) in terms of themed socialising for pub-weary booze-hounds.
It’s for those of us who may find a pint, packet of McCoys and discussing whether Moyes has indeed, got it in him, just won’t cut the mustard anymore. We need something else, something interactive, preferably something with a bat, something which allows us to spend half of the night on our knees reaching under people’s feet for a tiny little celluloid ball.
This is where Kosmonaut gets it right. There are plenty of NQ bars that serve food (furnished in a New York manner, naturally), and yes the foods not all that you had hoped. But one of my favourite bars in Manchester, Kosmonaut shall remain. Where else can you slap balls in a stranger’s face all night and get away with it?
Apart from Basement Sauna down the road of course.
Follow David Blake on Twitter here.
ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
Kosmonaut, 10 Tariff Street, Manchester, M1 2FF
Bar rating: 14/20 (please see the criteria below for an explanation of the scoring)
Food: 2.5/5
Drink: 4/5
Service: 3/5
Ambience: 4.5/5
