HERE at ToM we are putting way our pennies to afford the £95 tasting menu at Mana, which officially opened on Wednesday, October 17. More affluent foodies have booked in for weeks to come. We can only envy them.
Dropping on chef/patron Simon Martin and his team up in Ancoats on the eve of the launch certainly whetted our appetite. Team was definitely the word as we watched them pulling it all together. The CVs of the kitchen staff are impressive – two sous chefs from Forest Side plus another from fellow Lake District big hitter Gilpin, a couple from Manchester House nearer home plus the Chester Grosevenor, where Simon started out.
Advance publicity has centred on his important role at Noma in Copenhagen, where he was mentored by global superchef Rene Radzepi. Release of a specimen menu, featuring reindeer moss and spruce tips, led the tweeting classes to buttonhole it as a Noma lite Nordic manifesto.
Not so Cheshire-born Martin told me over an espresso in the starkly, beautiful, high ceilinged corner site up in Sawmill Court. “All the ingredients are available in the UK and we are using them to make our own take on our native cuisine. No other restaurant is doing what we’ll be doing.”
So all sustainable and local, if possible? “Definitely but we are not being doctrinaire about it. Yes, we don’t use olive oil; we have some wonderful rapeseed oil. I’m not saying we wouldn’t fly in some fish from The Faroes – it’s the world’s best. And those islands are closer to here than Sweden. We don’t want be pigeonholed as Scandinavian”.
Nor are they going down the natural wine route. It is the only downer at an equally adventurous Greater Manchester that there was no wine bottle by the list – you had only their wine pairings.
Simon says: “Not impressed by them on the whole. We may list one or two, but our emphasis is to find interesting bottles affordable prices. When we offer pairings, there may be 16 courses on the tasting menu but there won’t be a wine with every dish!”. Impressions (and reports from the October 17th opening night) are of a much more grounded operation than the flighty specimen menu released suggested.
Before Christmas Simon and a couple of chefs are heading off to Franklins Barbecue in Austin, Texas to research their passion for cooking with fire. It may not be long before alongside that ‘Marmite’ reindeer moss there may be some 14 hour slow-cooked brisket on the menu.
The recent shock closure of Manchester House has shot shivers across the restaurant community, but on the eve of such a high profile opening we’ve never seen a chef so relaxed.
Mana , 42 Blossom St, Manchester M4 6BF.
