IF THE Lawn Club in Spinningfields is ‘Wicker World’ (because that’s what their indoor garden furniture’s made from), then a decidedly different bar in Chorlton has to be ‘Timber Land’. The good folk at Palate appear to have planed down the surfaces since opening night when I lived in fear of splinters or snagging my chinos on a stray screw, but a few weeks on this new bar with its solid fittings still radiates rustic backwoods chic.
The Palate raclette was a blob of congealing cheese barely covering a thin, barely toasted bread base
Not that all that goes against the grain in a world of new bars pretending to be allotments (Allotment), ships (Hold Fast) and the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Ironbridge (Tariff and Dale), all three in the Northern Quarter, but that’s only Chorlton without the trees.
A large section of Polish forest was denuded of its own trees to create Palate, the latest project from Jonny Booth and Jamie Langrish, whose empire includes Parlour, in nearby Beech Road. Front of house there is Jamie’s wife Goska. Her brother is a furniture maker back in their native Poland and they commissioned him to kit out Palate because UK Health and Safety were, not unusually, playing spoilsport.
Apparently no one here is allowed to recycle actual pallets to create furniture. There may be a hazard from the chemicals they were treated with. Hence pallet lookalike furniture was created from the right kind of timber, dismantled, shipped across Europe and reassembled. Perhaps Palate should be called Flat Pack? All this for the conceit of palate/palette for a bar/eaterie.
The proof, though, is on the palate and the food offering is decidedly cautious. On the brown paper menu the only hot item was an onion soup. Most everything else came cold on sourdough, it seemed.
We struck lucky with a starter salad to share – a classic bistro combo of pear, chicory, walnut and blue cheese. Such a sharp, sweet-meets-bitter palate freshener (no pun intended) thanks to superior blue cheese, Stichelton, the ‘unofficial’ Stilton that dare not speak its name, and a surprising Vimto marinade for an already juicy pear. Perhaps £9.50 was a mite steep for it, mind.
For 50p more you can have a British charcuterie platter, which we did. A full sharing platter for two (the same applies to cheese) costs £20, but we wanted to explore other dishes, too. We got a slice each of six different British cured meats – air-dried pork collar, air-dried smoked mutton, fennel and Cubeb pepper salami, Cornish chorizo, wild Scottish venison and green pepper salami and air-dried beef and chilli bresaola. The two salamis were the pick of a terrific array, which merited a separate menu detailing their distinguished provenance – from Trealy Farm, Monmouthshire to Black Hand, Hackney Wick, which sounds like an anarchist cell.
They were accompanied beautifully by a real mouthful of a wine in every way – a Morellino de Scansano, Montagnana from Tuscany, full of abundant dark plummy Sangiovese fruit. At £27 it was medium-priced in an attractive short wine list. The draught beers are basically the Camden range, which I find way over-rated. If you go for similar platters at Wine and Wallop in West Didsbury you can partner them with a more interesting wine list and a great pick of cutting edge craft beer.
A quirky centrepiece to Palate is the huge table instead of a normal bar. They got the idea from Pizza East in Shoreditch. It may muddle the identity of the bar for a passing customer, popping on for a quick pint perhaps. We were in the narrow, intimate section at the back, concentrating on the food, which we found gradually slipping in our estimation.
As a lover of Bath Chaps I couldn’t resist Palate’s hot-smoked version, an open sourdough sandwich with rocket, sun-blush tomatoes and mustard mayo (£8.95, main image). It was a crispy BLT, by any other name, if an improvement on M&S.
That was OK, but the raclette was a disappointment. The doyenne of charcuterie platters and melted cheese in the North, possibly in the whole UK, is Friends of Ham in Leeds. Watching staff there scrape oodles of freshly melted cheese on to your potatoes there – it’s almost like performance art. The Palate raclette (£10) was a blob of congealing cheese barely covering a thin, barely toasted bread base, the dish redeemed only the extra salt beef we ordered – pure class from Butcher Frost down the road.
A similar pallid thing was my dessert – custard tart, rhubarb jam. The pastry was cold from having sat in the fridge too long, during which time the custard had collapsed, leaving a sad, cream crater staring up at me, while the redundant rhubarb ‘jam’ looked on helplessly. In contrast, my partner’s chocolate and dark rum torte with creme fraiche and orange passed muster.
Palate, as yet, seems unsure of its mission. Odd since the rest of the Booth/Langrish/Rupert Hill collection of bars have all hit the ground running, even if only Parlour has taken the food seriously (and been very successful). Here there are some teething issues in the kitchen to be addressed. If this is an unpalatable truth, sorry.
All scored reviews are unannounced, impartial, paid for by Confidential and completely independent of any commerical relationship.
Palate, 516 Wilbraham Road, Chorlton, M21 9AW. Open noon-midnight daily, with food served from noon-10pm.
Rating: 12/20 (remember venues are rated against the best examples of their type - see yellow box below)
Food: 6/10 (pear walnut, chicory and blue cheese salad 8, hot pig’s cheeks 6, charcuterie board 8, raclette/salt beef 5, custard tart 3, chocolate and rum torte 6)
Service: 3/5
Ambience: 3/5
PLEASE NOTE: Venues are rated against the best examples of their kind: fine dining against the best fine dining, cafes against the best cafes. Following on from this the scores represent: 1-5 saw your leg off and eat it, 6-9 get a DVD, 10-11 if you must, 12-13 if you’re passing,14-15 worth a trip,16-17 very good, 17-18 exceptional, 19 pure quality, 20 perfect. More than 20, we get carried away.