SLEUTH | Two New Bars, The Pub Cull and The Mystery Gun

Confidentials 18 March 2016

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

NEW NQ BAR BOMBSHELL

Another Sleuth, another new Northern Quarter bar. This time Sleuth hears the vacated Stevenson Square site on the corner of Hilton Street and Spear Street, formerly occupied by the non-boozy heart of indie Manchester, Koffee Pot, will be turned into a new watering hole by the building’s owners, Hatters Hostel. A spokesperson for the group confirmed the news, but couldn’t say, as Sleuth has heard, that they’d be knocking through into the laundrette next door. If so, Sleuth hears the new bar will be called Shrunken Jumper and will specialise in craft beer, such as the Wet Tissue Brewery's complex, pungent and frequently frustrating Odd Sock IPA, and cocktails, such as the Daz-mataz, which is blended for 40 minutes in the tumble dryer giving brighter, cleaner flavours. All staff will be dressed like Dot Cotton.

Way back when...

BACK FROM THE BRINK

Elsewhere, Sleuth sees the new basement bar on Bridge Street has started to take shape. Sleuth first got wind of this new subterranean beer bar, next door to Audio-T, in May last year when a company called All About Ale lodged a licence application with the council. Things then went quiet. Now, almost a year later, we’ve got a new sign. A good start, thinks Sleuth. Details are scant, but Sleuth’s told The Brink will major in beer from Manchester’s myriad microbreweries with a handful of cask ales and ciders.

Back from The Brink

THE MANCHESTER PUB CULL

Sleuth is worried. Manchester is losing pubs at an alarming rate and it's making Sleuth uneasy. The futures of The Sir Ralph Abercromby, The Salisbury and The Star and Garter hang in the balance as plans for St Michael's Quarter, Bruntwood's Oxford Road scheme and The Mayfield Quarter rumble on. The shadow of redevelopment looms large over the city's watering holes. Now comes the news that The Oast House - which by no means carries the same historical interest but is surely the most popular of the three - could be next. That's four pubs in Manchester city centre that could soon be gobbled up in the name of progress. Let's not forget, of course, the poor Ducie, which recently fell casualty to the Co-op's mammoth £800m plans for NOMA, as did the Crown and Cushion, or the Swan with Two Necks which was lost to the Printworks on Withy Grove.

This doesn't mean there's any shortage of places to drink (just look above), but as Confidential's Editor-at-Large said here: 'proper pubs possess that almost indefinable quality of time passing and of lives lived, as though the ghosts of generations of drinkers and chatters are sat among the present guests, informing the whole experience with their departed conviviality'. You don't get that in the Shrunken Jumper.

The Abercromby could be swallowed by St Michael's Quarter

THE TELEPHONE VICTORY FROM ABOVE

Sleuth was having a drink in Hanging Ditch Wine Merchants earlier this week. “What’s happening to the telephone box there?” he asked. This is so close to the shop it’s almost inside and the superb drinking terrace is compromised by the box’s ugliness. It’s been broken for months too, so it’s also useless aside from the naughties that happen inside. As we’ve written before, ‘Sippers of fine clarets have been treated to and filmed people shooting up in the box, arranging drug deals and being a deal of bother. Entreaties to BT have fallen on deaf ears. They want to keep it. Forget the anti-social behaviour, forget the fact it's never used as a phone box anymore, but oh what a fine advertising hoarding it makes.’ Recently Hanging Ditch wrote and talked again to BT and again was given short shrift. “But then the Dean of the Cathedral next door, had a word,” Hanging Ditch told Sleuth, “the box and, we hope, the bad behaviour will be gone within the month. It’s a miracle.” God’s work, indeed.

Speaking, of public naughties, Sleuth spotted a man, who appeared to be at the tail-end of a mammoth St Paddy's Day bender, relieving himself in a bin on the Square with No Name outside Crazy Pedro's this week. What baffled Sleuth is that the Square with No Name is surrounded by a number of bars with multiple perfectly working khazis, not to mention two perfectly discreet alleys running directly off it and two shadowy car parks. Nope. This bloke chose a bin in the middle of a square then asked his pal to hold up a jacket... it's a funny old world.

"Nah nobody has noticed mate... except that bar full of people... and that other bar... and those two old dears walking by... and that bloke taking a photo... apart from that..."

THE GUNS IN THE BANK

Sleuth was conducting a guided tour this week with lots of lovely people around the pubs of Manchester and also other spectacular spaces were drink could be obtained. They went into Jamie’s Italian for a Holts bitter and to gaze at the wonderful interior of the former Midland Bank. Sleuth told the story of when Confidential caught the nation’s press in a lie. Click here, it was hilarious. One of the actual items found in the clear out of the main banking vault was a gun, left there by a long forgotten and untraceable client. “I worked here,” said one man on the tour. “And when it was the Midland Bank, manager’s were given a revolver, but we were never told why.” Sleuth wonders if bank managers still get a gun… maybe today to defend themselves from criticism about bonuses. So maybe the gun in the Vault had been the Midland manager’s. Maybe he’d been Captain Mainwaring.

Midland Bank vault - but where's the gun?

VIVE LA DIFFERENCE ONCE MORE

Sleuth was intrigued by the snippet in the MEN, that Nigel Haworth, the celebrated and sort of celebrity chef, from Northcote Manor in deepest Lancashire, might be opening in the city. He’s quoted as wanting a departure from his renowned British cooking, instead, he wants to create ‘something completely different, more eclectic. Something from the Mediterranean, something from Lebanon.’ Good idea thinks Sleuth, Manchester has so few ‘Mediterranean’ restaurants. Good job too Bakchich and Comptoir Libanais haven’t recently opened. Oh right… Actually, Nigel what we really need, says Sleuth, a writer riddled with wisdom, is more top-grade British food, of exactly the type you provide in all those excellent pubs you’ve opened such as The Three Fishes in Great Mitton. Now that would be exciting, not another vaguely Mediterranean whatnot once more.

Three Fishes: we'll have some of this please

PARKER-BOWLES, GORDO AND BOND

Sleuth joined Gordo who was dining with food writer Tom Parker Bowles in the Indian Tiffin Rooms at First Street. Sleuth has no idea who the latter’s mother and step-father are. None. It doesn’t matter. The man himself was a charmer – Sleuth is talking about Parker Bowles not Gordo. The food at Indian Tiffin Rooms blew all three guests away. Outstanding, subtle and very different from what people might expect of Indian. Half way through, Parker Bowles looked up, “Amazing food this but just remembered, need to interview Sir Roger Moore on the phone, be a jiffy, do carry on.”

Tom Parker-Bowles with chef Rob Owen Brown, who as far as Sleuth knows, has never been asked to play Bond

NICK DOESN'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT

Sleuth attended the NRB debate with national food critic Jay Rayner this week, as well as a Food Entrepreneurship discussion with Sticky Walnut chef Gary Usher, Kitchenette founder Cynthia Shanmugalingam, CRU Kafe founder John Quilter and Altrincham Market's saviour Nick Johnson (who for an ex-Urban Splash, ex-Marketing Manchester, ex-CABE and ex-McEnroe director is now remarkably anti-establishment). It was a lively discussion, in which Johnson quoted Lord Grade's famous observation about Non-Exec Directors ('A non-exec is a bit like a bidet in your bathroom: nobody is quite sure what they are for, but they add a touch of class') and Quilter said the reality of hospitality is that 'you'll work Christmas, not go on holiday and your wife will leave you'.

Following the discussion, Sleuth's colleague and Confidential editor David Blake approached Johnson to ask about the rumours he'd soon be taking charge of Northern Quarter's redeveloped Mackie Mayor market hall, and may also get his hands on the embattled Stockport Market. "I'd like to talk with you regarding your rumoured plans for the Mackie Mayor," said Blake. "I don't want to talk to you about the Mackie Mayor," said Johnson, without so much as a glance up from his phone. "Right then," said Blake, "I'll fuck off to the buffet table then shall I..."

Nick Johnson (right): doesn't want to talk about it

LONDON ROAD'S SECRET STRUCTURES

Sleuth was interested this week to spot a gallery of pictures taken by 'urban explorer' Andrew Marland from inside the London Road Fire Station. The gallery, printed in the MEN, revealed some fascinating and previously unseen features of the abandoned Piccadilly structure (recently acquired by Allied London), such as these two buildings, possibly churches, which must have been very cleverly hidden by the building's architects, Woodhouse, Willoughby & Langham in 1901, because nobody has ever seen them in the station before... or since actually.