‘Simplicity at its barnstorming best’: Cantaloupe, Stockport, reviewed

There was once the best-known restaurant in Stockport town centre.

It had an ornate curved-glass front stairwell scaling the building’s facade, a kitsch interior that caught the eye of every passerby and served an exotic foreign import with the utmost authenticity. 

It made the best Double Cheeseburger you’d ever tasted in all your nine years on this earth, and the waft of chlorine in the car park only added to the experience. 

Now Stockport has started to well and truly change, and with it has come a goldrush of hip, well-meaning and almost intimidatingly tasteful new spots for eating and drinking. 

But what has a place profited if it gain twenty delis and eighteen eateries but lose its soul? It turns out, providing you don’t completely disappear up your own Underbank, a lot. 

So what of Cantaloupe, the latest to ride into town, hitch up its one-speed to the lamppost by the air raid shelters and hang its panelled cap by the door?

For a start, the place has pedigree. The CVs of chefs Joshua Reed-Cooper and Mike Thomas take in those places that started cropping up towards the back end of the last decade; the slightly wordy New Mancunia of Where the Light Gets In and The Creameries along with a bit of the old guard in The French. Meanwhile general manager Dylan Tiernan spent time up in the nosebleeds at Climat. 

Which is to say they’re more au fait with the type of dining that took us a while to get used to; single-side A5 menus that read like e.e cummings’ shopping list and a wait-and-see approach to wine pricing. A waking nightmare for someone with a limited budget and a hungry stomach.  

But that’s no bad thing, Old Mancunia was still stuck in Sicily, gorging on the umpteenth fritto misto under a fresco of Sophia Loren. We needed another soapstar hangout like we needed a hole in the head. What we needed was restaurants serving really good food.

So when I landed on Stockport’s Underbanks to meet my friend of now 21 years, Al, for a quick pint before dinner, the menu for Cantaloupe had only been online for all of about five hours. Maybe not great for carving up your fun budget, but ideal preparation for the sort of European-leaning approach to dining that Cantaloupe makes its MO; menus that are, as their Instagram explains, “small, succinct and considered. They change - and will continue to change according to the produce we get in and what we feel we want and ought to cook.” 

I’ve written in the past about the virtues of a have what we’ve got bistro menu and how it creates a different, arguably richer dining experience, like being asked to paint a portrait with a plank of wood and a chisel rather than the full works. You might surprise yourself.

The rillettes had run out, though, which was a shame but no matter; you live by the menu board, you die by the menu board. And it was 8.30pm (yes, very European). So after a pair of chilled, invigorating gin martinis (£9 each) and a bit of light waffling (on the joy of a sub-£10 martini) we simply ordered some bread and butter (£3.50), which let’s be honest is all anyone is looking to eat when they sit down. 

The bread was spongey, chewy and the right amount of malty, the perfect groundwork for proper, vein-clogging butter with window panes of sea salt on top. Also ideal for mopping up mains, which we promptly ordered - I didn’t want to miss out on that chicken.

Or should I say poulet au vinaigre and pomme puree (£21), just my type of menu writing, where your imagination does the colouring in. Al decided on lamb, cime de rapa (a sort of long leaf Italian broccoli), almond and anchovy (£23). To share we ordered the braised cannellini beans (£4) and a salad of puntarelle, fennel, endive and bottarga, a salted and cured fish roe (£7). 

Each of these, both alone and in concert, were simplicity at its barnstorming best. Anyone can spin some good PR on their Instagram captions, it’s another thing to actually deliver.  

A chicken leg with potato and a vinegar and cream sauce. That’s it. It really is that straightforward. I reckon I could try my hand with those ingredients in my kitchen, but then Keith Richards’ Blue Lena is technically the same thing as a Vauxhall Astra; it’s what you do with what you’ve got. Cantaloupe had chicken, potatoes and vinegar and made this; small, succinct, considered and executed with Jackal-like precision and flourish. Fantastic. 

Meanwhile Al was very impressed with the lamb, a dream with anchovies and almonds, and said while he could have had the sauce a bit thicker it was, to quote, “absolutely banging.”

The cannellini beans were braised to the point of almost taking on an entirely new DNA, not so much drunk on stock and herbs as utterly shitfaced. They were a perfect alternative to the sometimes samey presence of potatoes or a similar carb, as filling and wholesome but each bean with a belly full of something deep and complex. Considering that, it had to be a bottle of red with all of the above, and from the admittedly slightly steep but everchanging list we chose the Cantine Amato Vibrazioni Nero d'Avola 2020.

The salad meanwhile was bright and lemony, shot through with that unusual and compulsive aniseed overtone, delicately put together and not overpowering, but powerful. With all the shade of dark meats and even darker sauces, it’s good to balance it out with some light. I don’t really keep a tally on whether I’m eating healthily (which is a good job really), but this was a Swiss health spa of a side dish, especially ahead of dessert.

It’s not often I pull rank when I’ve got a dining companion, especially one that remembers my postgrad diet of pesto and Pizza Express, but on this occasion Al had no choice but to order the sorbets, while I went for the Mont Blanc (£8). A bit mean, I thought, so we split them.

Rather than go for one sorbet, we went for both; clementine (£3.50) and dark chocolate (£3.50). The clementine sorbet had that true, core taste of the fruit thanks to clearly making use of the rinds, and achieved that thing a good fruit sorbet does; every mouthful you have makes your mouth water, so you quench it with another spoonful, and so on and so on. 

The dark chocolate was the standout, though. It reflected the ceiling lights just as much as the chrome bowl it sat in, and was a swirling orb of chocolatey oblivion. Again, I don’t tally up these things, but if I did I’d be wearing a hair shirt for the next six months to atone for just a scoop of that stuff.

And finally, Mont Blanc, where the everlasting universe of things flows through the mind, and an opioid dose of chestnut puree, meringue and whipped cream had us nodding like Coleridge on a cheat day. I love a bit of culinary nostalgia when done well, and this dessert is proof that casting back into the past for inspiration can not only enhance a contemporary menu but give it a touch of timelessness.

In case you can’t tell, I had a lot of fun at Cantaloupe. Much like the menu, I’ll put it simply; I had bread and butter, chicken, beans, salad, dessert and red wine, and it was one of the best meals I’ve had in quite a while. 

It was even better than that mythical Double Cheesy, which I think you’ll agree is praise indeed. 

Cantaloupe, 71 Great Underbank, Stockport, SK1 1PE