SleuthSleuth is a sideways glance at the city every week, it's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. He's several people all at once. We give £25 for every story/rumour and piece of absurdity you find for us to publish. Sleuth sometimes even gets serious. We ask for the money back if any legal action follows. Follow Sleuth on twitter @mcrsleuth
Lounge Ten Reborn
Sleuth hears the Lounge Ten site is under offer. The moody three storey restaurant on Tib Lane was for a while a Manchester dining destination. On one occasion Sleuth took in five New York and Boston journalists for a meal and they swooned in desire for the red and black décor, the candles and the good food. They wanted a Lounge Ten of their own.
They liked the porn too. Sort of. As anybody who knew Lounge Ten will tell you, the walls contained pastel paintings of sexual acts. Ooh-la-la. The door knob in the private dining room lived up to its description, very large and veiny it was. The wonderfully eccentric manager Kit with his pink leather kilt used to love showing it off to shyer looking journalists. Sleuth hopes the new operator – we’ll let you know who it is when we can – will retain the fruitily hilarious decor.
Those pictures to right and left are very naughty, madam. You may choose not to look
Almost Famous Takes A Kicking
Manchester-born burger brand Almost Famous took a good kicking in the national press this week. A customer had taken offence to a series of female insecurities plastered across the ladies toilet wall in the new Leeds restaurant, the story had been picked up and pounced on by The Telegraph, Metro, Independent and Guardian. The walls were soon scrubbed clean. The customer complained comments such as 'My boobs are too small' and 'Why can't I be thinner?' were misogynistic. Sleuth is told the artwork was intended to highlight the triviality of the body hang-ups, but the complainants are probably right, 'trash food' brands like Almost Famous often get overly bawdy in order to shock and sell. Sleuth remembers Red's True BBQ pulling a similar stunt on veggies. An odd thing though... nobody seems to have noticed that the exact same artwork had been in the ladies loos of the Liverpool and Great Northern branches for around a year. 10,000s of ladies must have been for a tinkle without so much as a boo-hiss. Funny how some don't take offence until they're told to...
(Confidential shall be publishing an article on these trashy marketing tactics in the very near future).
Staff removed the stickers
Marina U-Turn
What did irk Sleuth though was how Guardian food critic, Marina O'Loughlin, joined in the Almost Famous bashing on twitter (below). Sleuth remembers how O'Loughlin, in a July 2013 piece titled In Search Of The Perfect Burger, had said Almost Famous was "Dirty, rude, politically incorrect fun". 'Fun', you say? Sleuth also remembers an earlier review by O'Loughlin for Metro in August 2012 in which the critic takes very little offence to the terms 'meat slut', 'meat whore' and 'filthy slutty bacon pig'. She even says 'Pucker up' to the latter. Sleuth thinks it's terribly odd that in 2012 and 2013 politcal incorrectness and filth are 'fun', come 2014 and they're not. Sleuth can understand the discontent, but cannot stand hypocrisy.
2013 'fun' (left), 2014 not so fun (right)
Metro review 2012: 'pucker up'
You The Tart?
So Sleuth went to his favourite MCR club, The Portico Library, for lunch with his lady. Wall to wall artists, a bastion of civilisation. They ordered food. The Portico Tart of leek and tarragon for her, and the Portico Omelette laden with ham for him. They sat and chatted and waited for the food. The charming waitress, and possibly cook, appeared and put plates on the table. "So," she said, "who's the tart?" "Actually, I've known her for some time," said Sleuth. His arm still hurts. The cook is still embarrassed.
The Portico - loads of tart
A Hop, Skip And Jump Still Requires Another Licence
Sleuth has been admiring the Tampopo pop-up in Exchange Square. This will soon be joined by another such structure from Salvi’s. Both businesses are refugees while the adjacent Corn Exchange transforms into a place filled solely with bars and restaurants. Odd though, thinks Sleuth, that both places had to apply again for licences even though their tiny pop-ups are a triple-jumper’s leap from the original restaurants. Licence applications depend on the size of the venue and are renewed annually - fair enough - but Sleuth isn’t sure why a licence a few feet from the original venue which has temporarily closed for refurbishment can’t be transferred. Then again transferring would mean the city council don't get several hundred pounds of new fee.
Exchange Square and a new pop-up
Heaton Moor Gets Serious
Sleuth hears Heaton Moor has a new restaurant in the offing, called Brassica from chef Paul Faulkner. Expect lashings of cabbage and kale but also the kind of accomplished take on English classics the chef has developed at Zinc, The Modern and the Albert Square Chop House, where he is currently head chef. Albert’s is on the shortlist for Manchester Food and Drink Festival’s Food Pub of the Year. By the time of the awards dinner on September 29, Faulkner will be long gone and his new 48-cover showcase should be up and running. Sleuth reckons with Damson around the corner Heaton Moor is becoming serious foodie territory.
Paul Faulkner
Kieran Fest 2014 From Friday 5 to Sunday 6 September
Serious Sleuth again. Chorlton teenager Kieran Crump Raiswell was murdered in an unprovoked knife attack in January 2013 and since then his parents have been working to raise money for the Manchester charity 42nd Street, which works with young people under stress. Every year there's a main fundraiser in Chorlton over three days with a quiz night on the Friday, football and a gig night on the Saturday and a whole fun day and cricket match at South West Manchester Cricket Club on the Sunday. It's a great cause, Sleuth thinks, and one worthy of huge support. For info and tickets click here.
Kieran, a life remembered
Use Your Loaf Please Thwaites
Thwaites was last seen in Albert Square during Manchester Jazz Festival when punters were asked to fork out £5 for a pint of average-strength ale in one of those squelchy plastic glasses. Sleuth was vexed, but has since been told that was beyond the Blackburn brewers’ control, and hopes for better things from Thwaites at the Manchester Food And Drink Festival (Sept 18-29). Sleuth hears Sale supper club organiser Iain Devine won a competition to create a beer for the festival and combined the flavours of the world famous malt loaf made in Trafford Park with English Bramling cross hops, the beer is called 'Use Your Loaf'. Nice. Confidentials own beer guru Neil Sowerby joined Iain this week to help him brew twenty barrels. Neil hasn't been seen since, if you find Neil please give him a strong coffee, stick a stamp on his forehead and post him back to us. Ta.
Is he down there?
Online Ventures Get Stuck In
Northern Quarter digital marketing company Online Ventures Group has produced a comprehensive report on Manchester that’s very comprehensive (113 pages of comprehensiveness) and looks at the present and future direction of the city. There are studies on business, tourism, education, lifestyle and so on. You can read it here.
James Welch, OVG's chief technology officer, has a proper go at one aspect of the city in the report’s conclusion.
‘Manchester is the UK’s capital of juxtaposition. It is both bloody great and bloody stupid at the same time. It has the potential of a beautiful future but has an overuse of history weighing itself down.
‘You can genuinely feel the hum of a bright economic, business-led future somewhere around the corner, if not yet fully understanding its true direction, but you can also smell provincial, sycophantic glorification of the recent, undeserving, past everywhere you go.
‘Those people around the city that continually tell you that “Liverpool is not as good as Manchester”, or “London doesn’t respect Manchester”, and that “everything gets built in London”, or other pathetic statements need fumigating away from the city in double-quick time.’
Sleuth knows exactly what he means. Good on you James. We need a broad-minded view of Manchester's identity, thinks Sleuth, one where kids learn about the 25 Nobel prizewinners from city just as much they know about football and music. We need to be more intelligent from the bottom up.
Confidential Editor Jonathan Schofield will be reviewing the report in-depth next week.
Let's not be parochial eh?
