IN football they call them trophy signings. I’m unsure if hiring Michael Wignall as consultant to curate the menu at Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs’ Hotel Football and Cafe Football was a culinary masterstroke or hype. It certainly didn’t scatter either destination with his own Michelin chef glitter.
Now the two-starred chef is succeeding Michael Caines at Gidleigh Park and his successor at GG Hospitality, the ex-United stars’ sideline to running football clubs and dabbling in property, is the self-styled ‘Hair Metal Chef’, Michael O’Hare.
Perhaps the biggest Manchester acquisition from Leeds since Eric Cantona? Certainly he brings a similar wacky charisma to the party, but surely as GG’s ‘Creative Director’ he’s destined to do more than rearrange the burger offering at Old Trafford’s Hotel Football and at Cafe Football in London’s Westfield shopping mall?
Glam rock throwback O’Hare conquered BBC’s Great British Menu with artistic flights of gourmet fancy and capped an amazing 2015 by gaining a Michelin star for his Leeds centre restaurant, The Man behind The Curtain, which he will continue to run.
Here’s our review from stablemate Taste of Leeds… and here’s our own review of Hotel Football’s eaterie, which does what it does well, but is unlikely very soon to serve up fish and chips in the style of O’Hare’s GBM winning dish, Emancipation, featuring cod loin, cod dashi, squid ink powder, crispy potato, scorched gem lettuce and gold shoots.
But, of course, there may be other outlets afoot with culinary Champions League aspirations. There are plans to turn one GG acquisition, the Stock building off Market Street, into a boutique hotel with a fine dining restaurant. O’Hare was snapped with Neville visiting the site, just as last week he was guest of the Sky pundit turned manager at his new project, Valencia CF, before the new appointment.
Over in Spain, apart from Valencia v Real Madrid (note the olives in his Facebook shot of the game in progress), the maverick chef took in Quique Dacosta – an hour south of Valencia and No.39 in the World’s Top 50 Restaurants List – where the eponymous chef/proprietor turns out playful, minimalist, deconstructed dishes.
Anyone for “Tobacco leaf and toro – sashimi-style slices of tuna belly served on a bed of smoked, caramelised kelp, micro herbs and onions rings offsetting the fattiness of the fish”?
TOM would head down Market Street for a bit of that.
Main picture is of Michael O'Hare unveiling his new look hair-style on BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen.
