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. Sometimes Sleuth even gets serious @mcrsleuth
INK IN A BLINK
Sleuth understands Squid Ink, a new independent restaurant in Ancoats, squeezed between Ancoats General Store and Kettlebell Kitchen is having its soft launch tonight. Sleuth's told this small 30-cover restaurant and art gallery plans to serve fresh, sustainable dishes from a small, ever-changing menu along with a specially hand-picked beer and wine list. This will be the first venue and labour of love for chef/owner Anthony Barnes who designed and built the restaurant by himself with a little help from his friends and family.
Customers will be able to choose from three starters, three mains and three desserts inspired by seasonality and world cuisine in a 'super-relaxed' atmosphere. Anthony is keen to offer a high standard of sustainable food, at super value, using local suppliers with a brilliant wine selection. But before Sleuth could squeeze anymore from Barnes, he expelled a dark pigment in Sleuth's face and made for the bushes.
Squid Ink love their crockery
BLANC-DE-BLANC
Raymond Blanc was in town this week for the launch of the Knutsford branch of Brasserie Blanc, his homage to his momage and her homely French cooking. Sleuth was there helping Blanc drink his Blanc de Blanc and managed to grab a moment to ask if there were any plans to open in the city centre after the closure of his Petit Blanc in 2010. He looked almost pained to admit that the unit, tucked away on a back street off Chapel Walks, had been too large and in the wrong location. This seems fair enough, as no-one has managed to succeed in that venue ever since – but Sleuth wishes the best of luck to the soon-to-open-there Grafene. Raymond assured Sleuth that his people are already on the lookout for Brasserie Blanc sites in both Manchester and Liverpool. Ooh la laah.
Despite his expanding restaurant empire, Blanc still manages to split his time between the kitchen and the Ministry of Silly Walks
SEXY CHEFS
Sleuth spent some time with another eminent French chef recently, the charming Jean-Christophe Novelli - once voted 'ze world's sexiest chef' (though Sleuth reckons our own Rob Owen Brown might have something to say about that). Sleuth met Novelli to discuss a series of evenings the multi Michelin star winning chef is to host at Manchester Italian restaurant, Don Giovanni ('Ah been there, done that', says Brown). Sleuth and Novelli skipped between many topics, from Jose and Pep, to Ready Steady Cook and the French obsession with striking. “How would you like to be remembered?” asked Sleuth finally. Novelli thought for a moment. “As a fortunate Frenchman who crossed the channel with a box of knives and fell in love with England.” Aw. But Sleuth despairs. How many Novellis could now, in the wake of Brexit, be deprived from making such a journey?
JCN: 'Ze sexiest chef, me?'
ROB: 'Him? No way.'
GAME OF THRONES SHOCK NEWS
So Sleuth was watching a dramatic edition of Game of Thrones and there was a character called Boris who was stabbed in the front by Michael, who had stabbed his friend, David, in the front, who had stabbed all the country in the front and then stabbed, in Parliament, a man called Jeremy, not his friend, who had stabbed the whole of his party in the front, who had all been stabbed in the front by their own electorate, who had stabbed, as with David, their own country right through the heart in an unholy alliance with some Wildings called Old Folk, because some tribe called the European Union Commissioners had misunderstood everything and stabbed even intelligent people in the front because they always know best. And now we all must suffer at the hands of another tribe called the Uncertainties until that Daenerys Targaryen rescues us with her...er... dragons, because that seems our only hope. Sleuth is waiting for series seven of this epic production and series eight, nine, ten, eleven....and on and on.
The Mother of Dragons cleansing the corridors of powerSLEUTH AND THE LEADER'S BLOG
Sleuth read Sir Richard Leese's blog on Friday 24 June with interest. Sleuth agreed with his sentiments, especially when he was calling for guarantees for EU students and workers in the city. A week on though, some thoughts seem tinged with painful irony. Leese wrote: 'A clear victory for Leave but still no clue to what happens next. If we are to avoid a flight of investment and a loss of jobs, what is needed is quick and decisive action from government. The biggest task for all politicians is to find a way of reconciling these diametrically opposed views of what Britain should be like and that is not going to be achieved by the sort of politics we have seen over the last few months.' Or even worse by the sort of politics we have seen over the last week, thinks Sleuth. Where's that Daenerys and her dragons?
SLEUTH, THE TRAM LUNATICS AND ARROGANCE
Sleuth was on the tram on Wednesday when he overheard a person say, "Why is everybody talking about this? It won't really affect Manchester." Sleuth decided to video the daft person but unlike another video from a Manchester tram, which curiously enough was exactly a result of Brexit, it didn't go viral and led to no arrests. Anyway, last Thursday before the result was known Sleuth, the editor and the editor-at-large, wrote a whole series of Sleuth stories smugly sneering about the Leave campaigners and their completely predictable loss in the EU Referendum. In the morning all three brave Confidential writers had a lot of egg all over their faces. So they apologise for the rushed nature of the revised Sleuths last week: this follows on from restrictions to the free movement of jokes.
'Ugh, yeah, erm, that Mayor job still going is it?'SLEUTH AND THE STOLEN PIZZA EXPRESS
Sleuth has been contemplating the death of the original Pizza Express on South King Street and musing on how things change. The fact that thirty years ago the mundane chain had seemed like a bright new future in cuisine is almost comical. Now you fall asleep at night and when you wake up another pizza place, often a Pizza Express, has opened in your navel or something like that. However, Sleuth thinks it's a bit much that the handwritten note on the closure sign giving the addresses of the other forty thousand nearby Pizza Expresses has been ripped off. People can take competition too far.
Oh come on now
OH FOR F...
Sleuth popped along to the Whitworth this week, to see former Turner-Prize nominee Anya Gallaccio’s new ‘ghost tree’ in the gardens outside the gallery café. Cast in a shimmering stainless steel, the artwork is a replica of a dead tree felled during the gallery’s spectacular £15m makeover by architects MUMA – which won the building a Stirling Prize nomination in 2015. Very impressive it is too, go see it. Whilst there, Sleuth also took in a work featured in the main gallery space (Sleuth forgets the artist) which involved some 500 words, repeated and condensed across five segments, until they resembled the compressed formation of stone layers over the millennia, or something like that. On Sleuth read, about the 'now stone' and the 'then stone' and the 'future stone' until he had to double back. ‘Oh that must be very annoying,’ thought Sleuth. 'Who's got the Tip-Ex?'
Perhaps the artist was a little stoned himself...
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