Sleuth is a sideways glance at the city every week, it's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. He's several people all at once. Sleuth sometimes even gets serious @mcrsleuth
SLEEPING GIANT RUMBLING
Sleuth popped into the new Home Sweet Home at Great Northern Warehouse last night and felt something stirring, a rumble... and it was nothing to do with the chipotle sauce. For years Sleuth has felt the frankly massive Great Northern an opportunity missed, a morass of forgotten realms and sleepy thoroughfares running along one of Manchester's busiest drags. But Sleuth can sense a change...
One of Hong Kong's wealthiest families, The Yeung shipping dynasty, has recently acquired the 400,000 sq ft beast and promised a £300m refurb. Sleuth's told the rethink will not only involve securing attractive new inhabitants such as Home Sweet Home, but consolidation of the entire space including; a rethink for Great Northern's untapped square (an ice rink is currently going in); the creation of a new diner-cum-bar street via Beat Street; and a mix of high-quality apartments and work space. Perhaps most interestingly though, Sleuth's told by an insider that Great Northern bosses intend to create a new high-end, gourmet food court modelled on New York's famous Chelsea Market (main image). Having visited the likes of Copenhagen's Torvehallerne and the Mercato Centrale in Florence, Sleuth's seen what these teeming centres of nosh and commerce can do to a city, and Sleuth says yes please, now please...
Mercato Centrale, Florence (or Great Northern 2017?)NEW RESTAURANT AT THE QUAYS
MediaCityUK's festival of chain restaurants has spread a kind of culinary desolation across the area. Aside from Damson, and to some extent The Dockyard (owned by the same fella, by the way), MediaCity's restaurant tenants, including Prezzo, Wagamama and some Holiday Inn thing from Marco Pierre White, display as much imagination as a caravan site.
Good news then The Lowry is preparing to launch a new restaurant, Pier Eight, as part of a £3m extension. The 300-cover restaurant, incorporating two shipping containers, will open on Friday 27 November and offer not one, but two, modern British menus. The Lowry’s executive head chef, Oliver Thomas, told Sleuth: "My ethos on cooking has always been about sourcing the best local and seasonal..." Yes, yes, Sleuth's sure it has, but please Mr Thomas, you've got an opportunity here, let's have some culinary personality down on the Quays. There's only so long those delecate Beeb folk can stomach Harvester...
Pier Eight plans for The LowryNEW WALKABOUT
Speaking of personality, Sleuth hears a new Walkabout is to open in the Printworks in December, taking over the former Henry J Bean site. According to the blurb, the new Walkaout will boast a new 'Reef Bar', where linked screens will loop underwater footage to give the 'impression of being in a Great Barrier Reef-like paradise'. Very apt, thinks Sleuth, last time he visited a Walkabout Sleuth had his own sub-aquatic experience with food slopped in cold, wet, sketchy puddles (likely dish water) as flying plastic pint glasses discharged over Sleuth's head.
The new reef bar will look something like this...QUILL AND THE CELEBRITIES
Sleuth was at the launch of Quill restaurant on King Street on Thursday night. The first food and drink place on the street for well over 100 years. Impressive £1m fit out, impressive 60 cover restaurant upstairs and an impressive 29-year-old chef Curtis Stewart from Bury. We're told Stewart’s been sharpening his skills in a couple of Michelin-starred restaurants (haven't they all) before returning to Manchester. Sleuth looks forward to his £80 eight course tasting menu. Also at the party was footy player Wes Brown, rugby league man George Burgess and Les Dennis and Bobby Davro. “Do you want to meet Les and Bobby?” someone asked. “No, why? What on earth would we talk about” said Sleuth.
Sleuth's ok thanks...SLEUTH’S DISH OF THE WEEK
This Thai Mussels Tom Yam Style on Tampopo’s new menu is a belter. It’s hot, just as a tom yam should be, and is rammed solid with seafood. It costs £4.25. It’s part of a re-imagining of the Tampopo menu that makes it more vivid and vigorous. Sleuth ate a particularly hot chilli while wolfing down the Thai mussels which made him more vivid and vigorous. His eyes watered for three minutes solid. Tampopo will be moving back into the Corn Exchange in December this year. They will face Pho, a similar operation. This menu makes Tampopo a serious foe for Pho. It also just makes a serious pho.
SLEUTH’S NEW FOOD STYLE OF THE WEEK
At the launch of Tampopo’s new menu was Masterchef winner Jackie Kearney who’s been advising the restaurant group on the new menu. Charming and funny woman Jackie Kearney. Both she and her husband are vegetarians. “Although, as he says,” said Jackie, “he’s a fish and chipocrite. Every now and then he can’t help himself and has to nip into a chippy.”
MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL BENEFITS FROM FRAUD
Sleuth was in Manchester Cathedral giving a talk this week and was frequently interrupted by some serious banging on the roof. Turns out the roof repairs are part of a fraud the Cathedral’s involved in. Sort of. After the inter-bank lending scandal over Libor the government redirected £40m of the fines it received to fixing cathedral roofs around the country. Hence the hammering from above. Maybe George Osborne is not so roofless after all.
PROSECCO ON DEMAND
Sleuth has been enjoying Albert’s Schloss and its happy democratic company, packed as it is with all shapes and sizes of humanity. But when he was last there he was sat near the door and spotted a button on the wall. If there’s a button it has to be pressed. So he pressed it thinking it was a joke. But no it was all real, hey presto, prosecco appeared. Sleuth thinks this idea is a good one and something that might be introduced by councils to increase the sum of human happiness. Imagine how much sweeter waiting, at say, Cornbrook Metrolink Station or that bus stop at the bottom of Oldham Street would be if you could just ‘Push for Prosecco’.
Getting schlossed is a doddleTHE SOLUTION
During Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Manchester Town Hall last Friday, it's emerged that Council officials asked for the Chinese premier's advice on how to deal with the city's escalating homelessness problem...
Gallows have mysteriously gone up at Manchester Town Hall this week... (credit: Mike Shaw)SLEUTH'S HARD HITTING NEWS OF THE WEEK
Thank god for this lot...
