BARGAINS are always relative but top-end London restaurants seem to have offered better value with lunch deals than their Manchester equivalents.
Now the city’s highest profile culinary destination (inexplicably lacking Michelin star recognition), Simon Rogan at The French, has taken up the cudgels with a Three Course Tasting Menu, which includes a glass of Champagne, half bottle of wine (Sommelier's Choice) and a bottle of water, all for £50 a head. t’s available Wednesday to Friday 12pm-1.30pm.
A sample menu sent us features: roast pumpkin with smoked eel and bacon; butter poached plaice, potatoes, onions and pig skin; chestnut with Douglas fir and blackberry.
Whether it is an initiative to get more bums on seats in the fallow times following Christmas or entice in customers daunted by the prospect of 10 course Tasting Menu for £85 before wine is added in, we’re unsure. It reminds us of the famous lunch deal at Michel Roux’s 2 star Le Gavroche in Mayfair which held its lunch deal price at £50 for years, also including a half bottle of wine each (a rather good one as TOM recalls from a recce). That’s up to £54.80 and doesn’t start with Champagne, but there is a choice of three dishes for each course, which we’d prefer.
Rogan's London restaurant, Fera at Claridges, offers a three course lunch deal at just £35 with a special offer about that includes a glass of Champagne for £35.
Congratulations by the way to The French’s arch-rival, Manchester House, for being named Restaurant of The Year in the Manchester Tourism Awards 2014.
Simon Rogan at The French, Peter Street, Manchester M60 2DS. 0161 236 3333, http://www.the-french.co.uk