By Neil Sowerby
I BLAME Beer Studio’s 6 per cent Arctic Blonde for my rambling take on the classic palindrome: ‘Able was I ere I saw Elba’. I had dropped in for a look around the boutique hotel bedroom part of the Northern Quarter’s new boozer, The Abel Heywood, and ended up having a three course lunch – plus hoppy pints made by the craft beer arm of owners Hydes.
The same bad company, who insisted on lunch, escorted me to The Castle on Oldham Street, a haunt of the band called Elbow, and “Abel was I ere I saw Elbow” was born over further pints. You had to be there.
Only a few doors from The Castle once stood a bookstore run by the the original Abel Heywood, a self-educated radical. Twice Mayor of Manchester, he opened the Town Hall in 1877 before 50,000 people after Queen Victoria couldn’t be bothered.
I’m unsure whether our Abel wold have approved about having a 160-cover gastropub and 15-bed boutique hotel named after him on Turner Street next to the iconic car park that wasn’t there in his day. Certainly it is a little pricey for the common man with at the top end suites costing up to £240. It trumpets itself as: “No ordinary pub, nor ordinary hotel, no ordinary food, no ordinary drinks”. To which we might add: “No ordinary prices.”
Early online comments have centred around a Lancashire Rarebit at £6.25 and beer prices above normal pub prices – but very much in line with the NQ norm. Before ordering a Potted Brown Shrimp and Salmon starter with toasted sourdough and mixed leaves I felt £9.95 was perhaps a couple of quid too much. It turned out to be a gorgeous example, so no quibble (anyway, one of the staff said they might re-address prices in the New Year).
But surely home-made pork scratchings at £3 and cider battered cod goujons with chips and crushed minty peas (mushy to you, me and old Abel) at £13.50 is too much? Ditto with my main – a quite small hot Game Pie with mash and braised red cabbage for £14.95. TOM will be back for a proper review early 2015.
And the accommodation? I neglected to take pictures – there are still a few small teething issues and some rooms need to be just a little less spartan. Still it is tucked away from the main NQ drag and unless the 2am queue to get into Black Dog Ballroom snakes around the car park a good night’s sleep should be guaranteed. Quite sweetly, each room (prices begin at £70) is named after a destination in Heywood’s original guide book series from Kenilworth to Betws y coed.
The pub space downstairs is quite substantial and is a design-led Victorian pub dream of leather booths and dark, heavy furnishings with appropriate portraits and framed curiosities. Besides the Beer Studio range and, thank God, Hydes' Original Bitter the bar offers 15 gins, fifteen whiskies, 15 rums, six vodkas (all start at £3.25 a single), a cocktail menu (nearly all £7) and a 25-strong selection of wine and bubbly selection (from £14.95 to £89.95 a bottle).
Gastropub, yes. Boutique bolthole, yes. But it’s also a proper boozer and I recommend the Abel-bodied, one and all, to try it out.
Abel Heywood, 38 Turner Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester M4 1DZ. 0161 8191441. http://www.abelheywood.co.uk