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
SLEUTH'S TRIPADVISOR HERO OF THE WEEK
After his stellar performance reviewing Burnt Truffle on TripAdvisor this week, level 600 contributor Chris B visited McDonalds:
'Chris B here! After devastating Burnt Walnut restaurant with my witty TripAdvisor review I went to McDonalds because I am the biggest expert in the world on cheese burgers! "How are the cheese burgers cooking today!" I asked the staff member who looked a bit young as though fresh out of school! "Like they always do!" he said and I immediately spelt out for my friends, "Incompetent"! The lad then said, "It's best if you get a Happy Meal, then you get a drink, fries and a troll toy"! This was the right answer but still I demanded to see the manager! Why had the boy hesitated in offering me this choice, I asked! The manager said the boy had done nothing wrong so I demanded to know the address of her head office!
'I went and sat on one of those uncomfortable plastic seats! The cheeseburger was very passable so at last something had gone right! But I was disgusted to find while playing with my troll, (my very favourite toy by the way) that a tiny piece of paint had chipped off! I would have shown my friends but they had left saying never again, mate, you're a proper twat! Some people have no standards whereas I am an expert on standards! When I brought up the hardness of the seats and the chipped toy to the manager, she had me thrown out!
'So here I am, the one and only Chris B, with the only friend I have left in the world, TripAdvisor! A friend that never tells me what to do and never checks up on me and doesn't care how many exclamations marks I use! My precious!'
'More lettice than relish, I think I need to tell TripAdvisor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'
SLEUTH'S ORANGE GREENS
Sleuth sees there's been more Manchester restaurant hoo-ha and ding-dongs on Twitter this week, with some bust-ups even making the national papers. One loud argument featured Featherblade, a new steak-for-£10 pop-up by Panama Hatty’s on Brown Street, which, from the menu to the dishes, the prices, the branding and the miniature cleaver they use instead of steak knives, defintely in no way resembles London's Flat Iron steak restaurants.
Having popped in this week, Sleuth can however testify that one thing in Featherblade is entirely original. Sleuth bets for their ‘seasonal greens’ Flat Iron simply serve green vegetables at their seasonal peak. Not so at Featherblade, where the seasonal greens turns out to be, er, carrots.
This is Manchester, we do things differently here.
'Eat your, er, greens'
SLEUTH'S YELLOW MEAT
Sleuth was dining at Picanha this week, the newly opened little sister of Fazenda in Chester city centre. Very good it was too, though Sleuth had to chuckle at a nearby diner who was baffled by a tropical fruit
"Would you like some gammon, sir?" said the passador, who carries the various meats between the tables, carving when requested.
"Oh yes," said the diner, "and what's that yellow meat beneath it?"
"Er, that's pineapple, sir." replied the passador.
Pineapple (aka yellow meat)
GORDO'S FOXY MISHAP
Sleuth was out this week drinking all of the city's beer, wine and mezcal (that’s Mexican for ‘trouble once home’) in Manchester with Gordo, the editor, the editor-at-large, the large editor and Mail on Sunday restaurant critic and new Confidential recruit, Tom Parker Bowles. Having drawn a line under TripAdvisor, Trump and ceviche, and agreed that any draught beer carrying the venue’s name is invariably crap, the group arrived at the topic of roadkill.
“I remember running a fox over as a young man,” said Gordo, “Beautiful it was. I felt sorry for it so decided to keep the pelt.”
“I’m sure it’s what the fox would have wanted,” said Sleuth.
"Thing is I didn't know how to best skin it," says Gordo, "so in the meantime hung it in my dad's butcher shop freezer."
"And he was ok with that?" inquired Sleuth, sensing a "but" coming.
"Well I didn't tell him, and it wouldn't have been a problem..." said Gordo, "except that the next day the food hygiene inspectors turned up, found this dead fox hanging next to a beef carcass and shut the shop down."
Parker-Bowles and Gordo definitely not pissed in the new Crazy Pedro's
SLEUTH’S EXTRAORDINARILY STUPID SIGN OF THE TIMES
Have people in authority lost their minds asks Sleuth, raising his arms to heaven, and imploring the Gods to strike the idiot or at even the idiotic committee down who were responsible for this sign. This is a very big gun ready to mark the Remembrance Sunday commemorations. Now, what do big guns do and when they do it, do they whisper?
Fancy that
SLEUTH’S SECOND STRANGE SIGN OF THE WEEK
Sleuth was on a mission on Friday to find authentic pubs and you can’t get more authentic than the Hare and Hounds on Shudehill. The problem for the pub is that the large transport interchange opposite keeps trying to barge in for a crap.
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'Yeah piss off pissy pants'
SLEUTH’S QUOTE OF THE WEEK FROM THE HARE AND HOUNDS
Sleuth’s friend, Dympna Gould, went to the bar in the Hare and Hounds to buy three pints of Joseph Holt’s finest bitter, a gin and tonic and a white wine. An old-timer sat at the bar looked up and said to her, “You best tell your friends to be careful of that bitter or they’ll end up like me?” “In what way?” was the response. “I’ve been drinking Holt’s bitter all my life,” said the man pausing for a reflective sip of his beer. He continued with, “And now I’ve got Holtsheimer’s.’
SLEUTH’S OVER-ESTIMATION OF THE WEEK
Sleuth was taking a group of local guests around when he asked them how many people they thought lived in Greater Manchester. Normally people slightly underestimate the 2.7m figure and go for maybe 2m. “18 million,” shouted a young man at the back who didn’t appear drunk. “Er, there’s only 63m in the whole country, and that would make us the second most populous metropolitan region in the world, after Tokyo.” “15m then,” said someone else. Sleuth pondered this for a moment and decided he likes people on tours with big ideas.
Tokyo, just a bit bigger than Manchester
SLEUTH’S LONDON SERVICE CHARGES EXCEPT ONE OF THE WEEK
Sleuth loves this on the Gaucho Restaurants website, ‘All prices include VAT and a discretionary 12.5% service charge will be added to your bill. (Exc Leeds).’ Could someone remind Sleuth about how that cliché of a Yorkshireman’s attitude to spending goes?
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"So I told him to stick his 12.5% up his arse"
SLEUTH'S MISSING GLASS
Meanwhile, at the newly opened Alchemist in Alderley Edge, one bartender necks one too many booze syringes and forgets to pick up a glass.
'Er want a glass for that pour mate?'
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