We've got smokin’ marlin, horny burgers and a nice fatty crumpet
No need for us to rain on your parade, because the weather is already doing that. September is when we find ourselves straddled between summer and autumn, swapping t-shirts and BBQ's one day for cardigans and bowls of soup the next. Fortunately, this time of year is an exciting one for chefs who can bring out the best in the season’s bounty of orchard fruit and rainbow root vegetables to pack into comforting curries, stews and crumbles.
Here are a few of the dishes we recommend you try around Manchester (and a bit beyond) this month:
Chirashizushi, Umezushi (£27.50)
According to Umezushi’s delightful menu, 'donmono’ means 'things in a bowl' in Japanese - and in the case of house special ‘Chirashizushi’, these ‘things’ are perfectly sticky sushi rice, buttery salmon, eye-ballin’ tiger prawns, silken sea bass and wisps of spring onion and pickled ginger. The setting (think lots of wood, balletic chefs gliding across an open kitchen and very few covers) is a bonus, and the awesome presentation makes me feel like a mermaid. If only every meal was this special. Ruth Allan
Umezushi, 4, Mirabel St, Manchester M3 1PJ
Lamb, L’Enclume (as part of a ten course lunch menu £59)
Gordo likes Simon Rogan and his ultra-cool, uber-warm-hospitality-with-knobs-on gaff in one of the fittest villages in the country. There’s a dish of such joy at L’Enclume that Gordo wishes he was stuck in Groundhog Day. A whole loin of lamb is roasted gorgeously pink, fat magically crispy, creamy, dripping with flavour. Next to it is a little green mound, a cloak of kale, out of the restaurant’s own farm with slight crunch and a personality. It’s guarding something inside the package like a kestrel with a struggling field mouse: sweetbreads, and that touch where the heat of an oven has been used brilliantly. It’s another texture bomb with a slight crunch all of its own and lushness tucked in. Wait, we haven’t finished. Three crumpets with lamb fat (main image). Load half of one with the lamb, kale and sweetbreads and eat. The only better experience, so Gordo is told, is going off to the desert in Mexico and doing Toad. Gordo
L’Enclume, Cavendish St, Cartmel, Grange-over-Sands LA11 6PZ
Tostada de Marlin Ahumado, El Taquero (£11)
I’m going to step in and do what Donald Trump should have done – apologise to Mexico. I’ve never been much of a fan of its food, thinking much of it looks like it’s been tossed on to a pavement from a modest height and then sprinkled with cheese. I was wrong. That mostly describes Tex Mex food - a kind of cross over junk food cobbled together by the Southern states while they were stealing large swathes of California and Texas from the indigenous people. Real Mexican food is actually a delight and can be found in Manchester's own tiny taqueria which has recently been re-launched with a pure Mexican menu and proud Mexican staff to help navigate newcomers through a menu featuring cactus salads, ‘corn smut’ quesadillas and hibiscus flower tacos. Marlin is a popular fish over there and El Taquero smoke theirs in house before shredding it, binding it in a punchy habanero dressing, piling it onto a home made corn tortilla and topping with slices of fresh avocado. Deanna Thomas
El Taquero, 42 Back Turner St, Manchester M4 1FR
Parmigiana, San Carlo (£7.95 as a snack, £12.20 as a main)
A good parmigiana looks like an explosion in an abattoir. Blood everywhere, with other bodily matter in various shades strewn around. Even the aubergine base to the dish, layered as it is, looks somehow carnal and charnel. Yet of course, the strange thing about parmigiana is it’s good for vegetarians, and without the Parmesan, good for vegans too (er, you know Parmesan cheese isn’t actually vegetarian, right? - Ed.). Dropping into San Carlo the other day, I sat by the window at the bar, went for this healthy option and got a cracker: moist, filling, luscious to look at, washed down by a Vermentino. And all was well with the world. Jonathan Schofield
San Carlo, 40-42 King Street West, M3 2WY
Steak burger - The Moorcock Inn (£8)
I really wanted to recommend ‘Leather Britches’, comfort food for poor Deliverance folk, but that was a one-off dish in a Michael Clay vegan tasting menu at Elnecot in Ancoats. Instead I headed for my own hills, the Pennines, to ramble around the Norland Moor Scarecrow Festival, but couldn’t resist The Moorcock Inn, whose ‘weird and ever more wonderful’ food I recently scored 9.5/10. This time, as the bar menu was suspended throughout scarecrow weekend, the only thing on offer was a burger. Trust Michelin-trained chef Alisdair Brooke-Taylor not to slap any old pattie over the coals. He has shaped 1,600 from 16-year-old, grass-fed Northern Dairy Shorthorn beef, sourced from Grassington rare breed specialists Gam Farm, while the cheese sauce was made from twelve-month-old Cheddar scraps from Calderdale organic outfit Pextenement. Bread and butter pickles were in-house naturally – Alisdair’s team even craft their own charcuterie from Gam Tamworths. It’s up there with Hawksmoor’s burger, definitely, though slightly chewier. Neil Sowerby
Moorcock Inn, Moor Bottom Lane, Norland, Sowerby Bridge HX6 3RP
Sourdough ice cream, Where The Light Gets In (part of an £80 tasting menu)
We were taking the piss, at first. The chefs had dragged out an ancient, wooden, hand cranked ice cream maker and had been pumping away at it for a good 20 mins. We did offer to have a whip around the restaurant and buy them an electric one, but on they went. “Just wait,” said chef Buckley. Surely it couldn’t be worth all this effort? It was. It really was. Made from leftover sourdough (about as WTLGI as it gets) the texture was unbelievable, the flavour a revelation. “I told you,” said Chef Buckley, as we demanded he bring us seconds. David Blake
Where The Light Gets In, 7 Rostron Brow, Stockport, SK1 1JW
