New 'Italian Wine Cafe', Best Meal Of The Week, Sleepkeepers, Daft Estate Agents

Sleuth was wandering down Brazennose Street in Manchester from the Town Hall to Deansgate when he spotted this latest venture. Seems quite tidy, menu largely composed of piadini, Italian flatbreads, but also some wine names he's not heard of on a very short wine list. The name of the place is Veeno, which sounds like a nineteenth century embrocation. It self-describes itself as an 'Italian Wine Cafe'. Sleuth checked his Food And Drink Venue Description App (the FDVD). No this is a new one, the app will have to be updated. Confidential will be in to critique Veeno next week.

So was Sleuth's best meal of the week in one of the new restaurants in town? Nope. It was at Manchester City in the Chairman's Suite. Jamie 'I'm-everywhere-even-in-your-dreams' Oliver is technically running the kitchens but it's Leon Smith who's the day-to-day man on the tools and the menu deviser. His ray wing and leek terrine (main picture above) was a little stroke of genius, as was his duck and puy lentils. "I want the flavours to be strong, I want refinement too," Smith told Sleuth. He's achieved both his goals. Sleuth isn't a City fan but wow what an impressive spread the Blues put on. 

Sleuth and the Deflate Agent

One of Sleuth’s colleagues is looking to buy a city centre apartment. Nothing monumental. Two bed, two bath, parking, preferably some walls, windows and a door to get in. Sleuth accompanied his colleague to a recent apartment viewing with a leading Deansgate based Estate Agent:
“So what’s the leasehold on this place?” asked Sleuth's colleague.
“Not sure actually," said the estate agent.

“Right, what’s the ground rent?”
“Don’t know that either.”
“The service charge on the building?”
“Nope.”
“These are things you should know if I’m going to spend £170k,” said the vexed colleague.
“The owner hasn’t let us know yet.”
“Isn’t that your job to find out?”
“Well I suppose so yes," said the estate agent.

“Where's the boiler?”
“There doesn’t appear to be a boiler in the flat. It must be somewhere else."

"Really. Do you know anything about this flat, other than where it is?"

The estate agent shuffled his feet and looked at the floor.

Confidential revealed last week how the Mayfield Station site next to Piccadilly has been granted a premises licence for 7,500 capacity event space. There are 79 conditions attached to the licence one of which requires free lollipops for people exiting. Sleuth thought how nice, but why? Turns out lollipops require strenuous sucking and thus help keep the chattering noise down for the neighbours in the early hours. What about free gags then as well?

Shssh...

Sleuth's been searching all week for it and now he's found it. Yes there it was. All the time it had been in the middle of the pavement at that extremely busy junction of St Ann's Street and Cross Street: a huge block of concrete with a stick on it. How could Sleuth have avoided it unless he'd walked into it with 20,000 others on the weekend. Is it art? Is it a mistake? Why does that stick need special treatment?

Witty chap that Stuart Maconie, the well-known broadcaster and writer. Here is his dos and don'ts for London writers when writing about the North. It's part of the 'northern' issue of the New Statesmen. It's very funny. Sleuth loves this example which is so true, Maconie identifying the classic article which he describes as: 'It’s Flat White Skinny Latte Not Flat Caps Any More! Wide-eyed, well-meant “Did You Know They Have Wi-Fi and Sushi?” travel blog.' 

Sleuth’s Cheeky Cheapskate Of The Week

Confidential has just held a competition for fireworks from the excellent Chorlton Fireworks emporium. There were three prizes including a top prize of the £105 worth of pyrotechnical delight. The winner went to pick up the prize and immediately laid the fireworks out on the floor in a pretty pattern. "What are you doing?" he was asked. "Taking a photo," said the man, “these are going straight on eBay.” Sleuth thinks he could at least have had the grace to wait till he got home.

Sleuth's Saccharine Sickly Sweet Job Title Of The Week

Sleuth received this gumpf on Thursday: 'Macdonald Manchester Hotel & Spa and Macdonald Manchester Townhouse are celebrating their housekeeping team’s dedication to providing guests with the best 40 winks by renaming them ‘Sleepkeepers’. They have been hailed as the unsung heroes of the night by hotel bosses who have changed their titles to mark their success in ensuring guests enjoy the most relaxing stay.' Yak. What's wrong with the title housekeeper thinks Sleuth? Sleepkeeper is weird, sci-fi almost, or perhaps an alternative name for an anaesthetist. What next? Bar staff calling themselves something ridiculous like mixologists just because they can make cocktails, coffee bar staff calling themselves baristas?

Big Nose Obscenity Of The Week

Every seven days or so Sleuth is stopped in the street by policemen, concierges, Signore Piadini, Leon Smith, estate agents, lollipop ladies, Stuart Maconie, firework cheapskates and all the sleepkeepers in the world and asked: "Where can we find a mannequin with an obscene nose in a Manchester shop?"

"Why," says Sleuth, "for the answer to that perverse question you'd have to go to the upmarket fashion store Hervia Bazaar on Spring Gardens."

And to prove this he showed the policemen, concierges, Signore Piadini, Leon Smith, estate agents, lollipop ladies, Stuart Maconie, firework cheapskates and all the sleepkeepers in the world, this picture.

Randy the mannequin's passion for his co-worker was as plain as the nose on his face