I NEVER ventured into the old Duo store on King Street. The allure of fancy boots leaves me cold. Fancy food, that’s another matter. So does the £1m rebooting of the site to create Quill and the shoehorning in of an inventive young chef set me all aquiver?
Well, yes. Imagine the love child of Ithaca and The French – that’s Quill. Decor is of the dark brown is the new black persuasion; the food is all delicate textures and intense flavours, almost Simon Roganlike, served in the kind of faux rustic earthenware only big bucks can deliver.
Glitzy Ithaca, of course, famously flamboyant, didn’t survive and their John Dalton Street premises remain empty. That bereft look has been shared recently by King Street, stores aplenty, including Duo, bailing out of the aspiring ‘Bond Street of the North’. Enter Quill.
Fine dining to the rescue. With a little help from the downstairs bar, they hope. Here Hotel Gotham escapee Joannes Hubertus Van Goethem masterminds a mean cocktail operation. On our entrance we half expected Anthony Perkins to shuffle forward. There are enough stuffed crows to populate a Psycho set… along with a book collection bought by the kilo. It’s all about quills, feathers, pens, geddit?
Quill didn’t do itself any favours with an old school launch night with paparazzi on red alert for assorted footie and soap alumni and, bizarrely, Les Dennis and Bobby Davro. The real star quality already looked to be behind the stove – young chef, Curtis Stewart. Canapes of crispy haggis truffle emulsion, then razor clam, mango and curry signalled the 29-year-old’s intent to dazzle in his openish kitchen.
Bury-raised, Wigan trained, off he went to serve time in some serious Michelin kitchens – Whatley Manor in Wiltshire and the then Michelin-starred Coworth Park near Ascot, Berkshire, before becoming head chef at Cotswolds hotel, Foxhill Manor.
City centre Manchester, though, is a whole different kettle of turbot. The public dining room seats 60 and yet feels intimate. Aim for one of the window tables – currently you can look down on Santa-garbed lasses sizzling up Christmas Market Bratwurst.
Our aim was much more gourmet, to sample Quill’s Tasting Menu. Eight courses, augmented by amuses, pre’s and petit fours, cost £80. Which looks a bargain when a la carte offers two courses four £40, three for £50 (continuing the bookish conceit courses are divided into Chapters).
Matching wines ratchet the Tasting Menu price up, ouch, to £145 a head, which I was wary of, but the successful pairings, courtesy of ex-Abode sommelier Anthony Daniel, were a major joy in a meal that confirmed Quill as a real contender in the city.
Peruse the full list of dishes and wines below. It reads along modish minimalist lines – ‘Venison, Haggis, Yeast’. You know the score. I’m happy with it at places like Bermondsey’s Restaurant Story or Belfast’s Ox, where the magic on the plate transcends the haiku like menu blurb. Curtis Stewart pulls it off, too, on the evidence of this meal.
Scallops, Salt Cod, Chocolate sets the tone. The theatrical backdrop is a blizzard of dry ice eddying from scallop shells on stones. The scallops themselves in the foreground have found a perfect salty-sweet marriage with dark cacao and salt cod, while the accompanying old vine Verdejo, powerful, oaky, nutty peachy, is no demure bridesmaid.
This was the first course proper after dainty amuses and excellent bread with umami-fuelled Marmite butter, It came with a Quill box that opened to reveal two half shells packed with chicken liver parfait, morello cherry compote and a spiced cherry jelly, on a nest of straw. Playful, savoury, memorable.
Textures kicked in next with beetroot done different ways with curd and that most under-rated if not understated of herbs, lovage, followed by the oddest dish, combining venison tartare and haggis crumbs with another umami shot – of yeast, apparently. Not entirely successful this idea. Which you cannot claim about the faultless combo that followed – crisply skinned stone bass and charred corn in a miso broth.
Masterful stuff, as was an ambitious yoking of hay-smoked lamb rump with shallots and boquerones. Another great wine pick accompanied – St Joseph ‘Esprit De Granit’, offering Northern Rhone syrah spice with hints of smoke and black olive, so lamb-friendly.
My favourite among the deserts was the most ethereal, a disc of dried apple, a blob of stewed apple, sorbet and tiny tranche of coriander puree in a delicate apple ‘consomme’– served with a late harvest Kiwi Gewurz, lushness in a glass.
Ambitious is the word for all of this and the raucous build-up to Christmas is not the ideal time to be serving such feathery light (sic) food of such refinement. So perhaps the bar may have to carry the operation for a while. Even that was pretty quiet the Tuesday night we were there. Footfall along King Street was all Yule gewgaw and snack-focused, obviously. Fingers crossed that when the Christmas decorations are taken down Stewart’s star will still be shiningly so brightly. 2016 could belong to him.
Quill, www.quillmcr.co.uk 20-22 King Street, Manchester M2 6AG. 0161 832 7355.
Saturday from 12pm until 2.30am. The restaurant will serve lunch from 12 noon until 2.30pm, afternoon tea between 3 and 5pm and evening service will be from 6.30 until 9.30pm.
Tasting Menu (to be taken by the whole table)
Scallops, Salt Cod, Chocolat. Paired With Naiades (Rueda, Spain; 2011)
Baby Beets, Sheep’s Curd, Lovage. Paired With Domaine Du Pré Semelé Sancerre (Sury-En-Vaux, Maimbray, Sancerre, France; 2014)
Venison, Haggis, Yeast. Paired With Fleurie, Le Quartier Du Cru Beaujolais (Fleurie, France; 2013)
Stone Bass, Miso, Seaweed. Paired With Sepp Moser Grüner Veltliner Terrassen - Biodynamic (Kremstal, Austria; 2013)
Hay-Smoked Lamb Rump Anchovy, Shallot. Paired With Tain St Joseph ‘Esprit De Granit’ (Tain L’hermitage, France; 2010)
Chef’s Pre Dessert. Paired With Domenico De Bertiol Prosecco Di Valdobbiadene Spumante Extra Dry (Veneto, Italy)
Apple, Coriander, Consommé. Paired With Fromm Late Harvest Gewürztraminer ((Half); Marlborough, New Zealand; 2012)
Chocolate, Cashew, Buttermilk. Paired With Krohn Colheita 2001 (Douro, Portugal; 2001)
Petit Fours. Also with Fromm Gewurztraminer
