THE colour and life is all inside Bakchich.
Bakchich is a little treasure. Well-run with good food, vivacious, and attractive in that canteen-like Middle-Eastern manner.
The facade to Chester Street is as severe as Louis Van Gaal's match face. Then again the whole Quadrangle development, taking up what the American's might call a city block, is like that. Makes you wonder what the architects Calderpeel who designed the place feel about the building six years after completion. Are they proud it of? Do they cough and change the subject when it's mentioned?
Bakchich should be proud of itself.
The interior is as colourful as red underwear blowing on a washing line on a dull day. The food is Lebanese so there's an entertaining mural of characters and cars from sixties Beirut when the city was known as the Paris of the Levant. That was before the hell that can be religion tore the place apart with a little help from the human condition that is politics.
If everybody in Beirut had sat down around Bakchich's wafer-thin bread and beautiful hommos (or hummous, hummus, humos, hommus, hoummos, take your pick) they might have sorted it out. This is food as therapy, food as a peacemaker. The homemade hommos (£3.95) at Bakchich makes every other hommos I've eaten seem pointless. Apparently it's still the same mix of chickpeas, tahini, lemon, salt, garlic and olive oil as all the others, but there is a lightness to the texture and a lift to the flavours in the Bakchich version that made me drift off into a sort of food trance.
Best hommos everBack in reality, the samek meshimi (£11.95), charcoal grilled salmon marinated in a 'pomegranate molase' was fine too. And huge. I have no idea what a 'molase' is but it elevated the salmon which combined with the excellent salad and the light rice made for impressive teamwork. An earlier visit for the mixed grill meshawi (£17.90) was equally massive and equally well put together with the shish and the kofta the standouts.
Big mains with salmon grillI was so enjoying things the first time around that I'd ordered another starter after the main, the grilled halloumi (£4.95). This again revealed that quality of timing and touch that is so often missed in a place such as Bakchich which is fitted out for casual rather than formal dining.
I finished off with another splendid dish, an almond and pineapple cake at £3.95. This was clearly homemade and cleverly done, floaty pastry, big fruit and nut, topped with a very good ice cream.
A lovely tartService was pleasant, informed and brisk. There was entertaining people watching as students and admin staff from the nearby universities came and went.
I observed the scene soberly - unusual this for me on my missionary work to bring Confidential readers the facts about Manchester's food and drink. I had no choice. Bakchich is dry. I drank a lemonade with lime for £2.50, which made me feel like I was ten-years-old and the only drab and over-priced thing I found on the menu. The Laban Rob (£2.50), a yoghurt drink with a slight saltiness was superb. Apparently it works very well with the grills. I woudn't know. I wolfed it down before the grill arrived. Try it.
Bakchich is a little treasure. Well-run with good food, vivacious, and attractive in that canteen-like Middle-Eastern manner. It kept scoring all the way through the occasion unlike Louis Van Gaal's team at present. I might invite the architects of Calderpeel along, show them what colour and charm mean.
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Bakchich, 4 The Quadrangle, Chester Street, Manchester, M1 5QS. 0161 228 3158
Rating: 14.5/20
Food: 7.5/10 (Hommos 8.5, halloumi 7, mixed grill 7, salmon 7, cake 7)
Service: 3.5/5
Ambience: 3.5/5
Paris of the Levant
Colourful interior
Can this even be classed as architecture? Thanks be for the interior
