STUPIDITY comes in many forms. I can't count to ten without getting confused at number seven. But the stupidity of the woman in a popular city pub before Christmas, took my breath away. Let's call her Apple and she had an air of the committed anti-fracker about her.
Most of the dishes have a simple lubricious Italian elegance, they make you feel healthy, right in yourself but up for it too.
She was drinking with university colleagues and her mind was closed. Sealed. Apple said: "I don't like any restaurants in Manchester. They're all too corporate. Even the independent ones are too corporate."
We explored this concept and got nowhere.
We weren't ever going to get anywhere.
But let's come back to that, because it's relevant to Fumo, another guaranteed success for the San Carlo Group.
Fumo shining brightly
If you know Cicchetti in House of Fraser this is its twin sister in all but name. Small to medium plates, marble surroundings, big windows, expensive fixtures and fittings. This time though there's an upstairs part accessible up a staircase which is all sweep and swoosh and pure 1960s' Bond movie. The stairs disappear out of the building and into the atrium of the main offices of One St Peter's Square. Presumably this is so visitors waiting in the atrium can watch the movement up and down the stairs.
The place as per the San Carlo model is filled to the brim with staff rushing around and asking people if everything is fine, pouring wine before they've asked and smiling and chatting.
This is the essence of the success of the group. The choreography of movement of all those Italian boys and girls through the tables and back and forth to the bars and service areas creates an energy not found in other Manchester restaurants.
Jolly Staff
The food is as attractive as the hand-picked staff. Juicy morsels: especially the spaghettini, the pigeon pate, the tuna, the lamb cutlets and the wonderful pisellini, aka peas and ham. Most of these have a simple lubricious Italian elegance, they make you feel healthy, right in yourself but up for it too.
The spaghettini (£7.50) with adornments of seafood has correctly cooked and timed pasta and a lightness of touch. The pigeon pate (£7.50) is gruff in comparison but rammed with flavour enhanced by a smidgin (on the pigeon) of truffle, the latter offering that utterly distinctive and never unwelcome smell and flavouring. Just as good is the tuna (£8, main image), again a robust dish, but finished off with an engaging fennel mousse.
I loved the pisellini (£2.50), the pea and ham dish, it was so heart-warmingly simple and delicious I couldn't help but smile - peas are a gift from heaven. The lamb cutlets (£7.95) were lovely too, rosemary rich, with a stonkingly good gravy. They came on hay, which in this case and for those who love geographical puns was very much Hay-on-Why.
Coo coo pate
Lamb, hay, gravy, peas and ham and a bit of an imploded burrata mozzarella
The wild sea bass (£8.50) was clumsy, needing the heat of peppers to give it any sort of definition. The burrata mozzarella (£7.50) was too loose in its centre, yea it needs to be liquid-like in there, but the cheese shouldn't break like a tsunami over a harbour wall.
Seabass
A Sicilian lemon meringue (£5.45) provided a satisfylingly sweet ending although the cheeseboard (£7.15) with two types of pecorino cheese out of the three cheeses on offer was limited and disappointing - I'm not sure pistachio pecorino should be allowed out in public but then I think any contamination of cheese with fruit or nuts is the devil's handiwork.
Handy meringue
It's clear the kitchen at Fumo isn't cooking to the standard of Cicchetti across town. Yet I really enjoyed the visit. Fumo is a good-looking venue with some excellent menu options and it's fabulous for people watching and packed with whirling waiters and waitresses. A proper restaurant experience is not just about the food. Never was.
Fumo is also good for this part of the city. Readers of a certain age might miss the Dutch Pancake House which occupied this site, but it was dingy and old and the food was rubbish. Fumo is sharp as a pin and fits the new St Peter's Square and the ground floor of this shiny building from Glen Howells Architects like a glove.
Not that Apple, our friend from earlier, would have liked it.
She'd closed her mind off, shored it up against the word she found the greatest expletive in history, 'corporate'. Even Manchester businesses such as Home Sweet Home, Gorilla, 63 Degrees, Yuzu, Teacup, Rose Garden were done-for, condemned as 'independent maybe but they're still too corporate'. Not that she could define exactly what she meant.
I'm afraid to say, I deliberately wound Apple up by mentioning San Carlo. It was cheap I know but her reaction was rewarding and typical. She exploded, scattering bits of homespun sweater across the pub, bursting eardrums with bitter counter-culture rants.
One St Peter's Square framed by the Cenotaph
The San Carlo Group for certain people is the beast because it attracts all sorts; crowds of professionals, successful business people (and no doubt successful 'business' people) as well as lots of regular citizens who've saved up because they love coming once a year to see and be seen, people who think 'counter-culture' is something to do with shopping. At the same time it attracts lots of 'wags', general hangers on and sychophants. But that's what happens in successful restaurants. It's what makes dining with the San Carlo Group so much fun.
I confess the Apples of the UK trouble me, their educated narrowness. I go everywhere and enjoy the spectrum of city dining from This'n'That and Hulme's Kim-by-the-Sea to The French and, now, busy Fumo. Variety is of course the spice of life and variety is also the spice of dining. Strange how puritanical, how dogmatic and fanatical, those who yearn to be the breakers of the system and the dreamers of our future can be.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter @JonathSchofield or connect via Google+
All scored reviews are unannounced, impartial, paid for by Confidential and completely independent of any commerical relationship.
Food: 7.5/10 (pigeon pate 8.5, pisellini 8, burrata 7, lamb chops 8, spaghettini 7, seabass 7, merinque 7, cheese 6.5)
Service: 3.5/5
Ambience: 3.5/5
