What to expect from Ancoats' new wild dining, foraged food restaurant
The team behind Mana, Manchester’s first ‘wild dining experience’, has been busy putting the finishing touches to the restaurant before it opens in Ancoats next week.
Mana (meaning ‘the power of the elemental forces of nature embodied in an object or person’ - righto) will be the debut restaurant for Chester-born chef Simon Martin, who spent two years working for Rene Redzepi, owner of gastronomic mecca, Noma.
Dishes include fried reindeer moss dipped in pine, beige scallops with nutritional yeast broth and ‘next year’s cucumber’ with lemon thyme
Martin's new project will open four evenings a week from Wednesday to Saturday and Saturday lunchtime, offering a £95 no choice set menu plus various drinks pairing options. The reservation-only restaurant will serve a menu of fourteen to twenty plates in quick succession to showcase the best seasonal produce available.
The restaurant, which describes itself on its website as ‘an informal dining experience’ posted its first menu on Instagram last week. It featured courses such as fried reindeer moss dipped in pine, beige scallops with nutritional yeast broth and ‘next year’s cucumber’ with lemon thyme. (Has chef Martin discovered time travel? Ed.) Other ingredients include pheasant garum, smoked dulse and lacto-fermented barley.
The airy space includes a herb wall with fitted solar lights to help stimulate growth, hand-blown glass light fittings, curved floor to ceiling drapes and furnishings in neutral shades of cream and brown.
The unconventional bespoke kitchen has been specially designed into four different temperature zones: cold, ambient, freezing and hot.
Mana’s first service will be on the 17th October, and they are now taking reservations for the rest of October and November for their ‘Fall menu’, focusing predominantly on wild game, early season shellfish and ‘a cornucopia of the forest’.
Did we mention the milk skin cabbages?
Mana, 42 Blossom St, Manchester M4 6BF
