ON the evening £1.5m Menagerie unleashed its VIP launch bash – cue paparazzi snapping C-list lovelies – I tickled my palate with a tasting menu in Grafene, which itself has spent a considerable amount of dosh on the fit-up.
Not that it’s aiming to be a place where glam party animals go out to play (though its excellent house bubbly Pommery is better value than big bucks Cristal – as if that matters to the glitterati).
I hope Grafene’s more mature approach doesn’t prove to be its downfall in our fickle city because this is a place with serious fine dining intent. That’s despite feeling it necessary to go down the all-day breakfast to nightcap path.
The tasting menu signals that intent. It’s less flash than the £80 eight-courser at doomed Quill, which made The French’s 10 courses for £85 and Manchester House’s 14 courses for £95 look a bargain, and it is just £49 for seven courses, all small plate versions of a la carte staples. An accompanying wine flight is a reasonable £35 a head (paired wines at Quill added £65 to the bill).
I’d tasted several of the dishes during the soft launch, when I felt a lack of focus, perhaps down to the presence of both an exec chef (Darren Goodwin) and in situ head chef (Damien Cunliffe, ex-Volta) fine tuning in tandem. Goodwin leads the kitchens at Losehill House, the Peak District hotel base of Grafene owners Paul and Cathryn Roden.
The good news, on the evidence of the tasting menu, is the food has settled in nicely (all prices are as if you were choosing from a la carte, either as a starter or main).
My favourite here is still the pickled mackerel, kohlrabi, apple, chilled sorrel soup (£9 starter), a chlorophyll and oily fish rich dish that wouldn’t be out of place at The French, but a pork tenderloin (main picture) pushed it close. £21 as a main, this was exemplary porkiness – from the tender pink tube of loin to a glorious ham hashcake strewn with deep-fried apple swirls, crisp celeriac and trompette mushrooms.
I’ve heard great reports of a Herdwick lamb main, but it didn’t make the tasting menu; lamb was represented from the starters by what ann esteemed critic colleague correctly identified as a take on French classic Lamb St Menehould.
Here in this £10 starter the breast is cooked slowly for three hours, bones removed, squashed, covered in mild mustard, bread-crumbed and roasted. Like him, I thought the fat under-rendered, which I can handle with pork belly but not here. A vaguely levantine accompaniment of aubergine crisp, saffron mayonnaise and ubiquitous pomegranate felt a mite extraneous.
The caulilfower risotto in a crab bisque with buttered poached turbot, grapes and samphire (£22), offering bold, spicy savouriness, had definitely meshed since its debut; ditto the contrasting first course of pea mousse and goat curd (£8 starter). Delicate to the point of ethereral, it's not one for the autumn menu.
There’s an affinity with greenery in the kitchen. Witness an extraordinary pudding which I would have enjoyed more if the granola element hadn’t ambushed my ageing teeth (as with pomegranate, I’m not a fan). Still sorrel posset and sumac meringue with creme fraiche sorbet (£8) is definitely a first, a subtle riff on lemoniness.
Finally, dark chocolate delice with malt barley ice cream, malt meringue and salted caramel ticked all the chocoholic boxes.
Choose carefully from a compact but canny wine list that eschews some of the usual suspects. I find the wine expensive by the glass, but there are splendid bottles between £20 and £40. We drank a pretty Pinot Noir from Sancerre, lightly chilled.
Before our meal we supped a glass of Picpoul de Pinet, another summer tipple on the bar side of Grafene, which I can’t yet warm to in comparison with the comfortable, light-filled restaurant section. It feels more pre-prandial rather than a destination in its own right like, say, Hawksmoor’s or Mr Cooper’s. Service, too, hasn’t quite settled in. Still, as with the food, there is promise in the whole enterprise, not quite realised yet.
And, at least we’ll be spared smudgy sushi platters and gals pouring bubbly while hanging from chandeliers.
Grafene, 55 King Street, Manchester, M2 4LQ. 0161 696 9700. Open 8am-11pm, Fri 8am-1am, Sat 9am-1am, Sun 10am-11pm.