A TWEETED menu has caused quite a rumpus with Manchester’s cautious culinary bunnies getting all sniffy about ‘Fried Reindeer Moss dipped in Pine’, ‘Milk Curds with Urchin and Dessicated Spruce’ and ‘Squash cooked in Birch Syrup and lacto-fermented Barley’. OK, maybe terms like ‘nixmatlised ‘and ‘binchoton’ are a red rag and ‘Next Year’s Cucumbers’ is not just recognised as a playful conceit (we are talking seeds?).
Well ToM is made of sterner stuff, while recognising the unreconstituted Scandi food offering of Ancoats newbie Mana may not prove to be everyone’s cup of tree sap.
We just hope that our fave Norse shutting in Harrogate was down to rents rather than the reluctance of stuffy Tyke burghers to embrace an entrancing Nordic-influenced cuisine.
Surely Manchester will go the whole Hygge for ex-Noma chef Simon Martin’s debut restaurant, opening in Sawmill Court on October 17. Actually, Hygge is a twee term, tweaked to sell comfort food and jumpers; there’s nothing twee about the menu above. It will cost you £95 a head and the 16 courses will fly by according to our fascinating interview from Simon, who hails from the Cheshire tundra. Puglian pasta at Sugo, octopus and custard tarts at Portuguese Canto, Neapolitan pizza at Rudy’s, Modern English at Elnecot with a questing nod to the past and now Mana. We are living in a melting pot golden age. Don’t mock @Mana_Restaurant till you’ve joined the adventure. We hope they make it work.
Come on, there’s more to eating out than Refineries, Anthologists, Alchemists, Menageries, Gustos, Botanists, rip-off restaurant/bars with views… or even fine dining with safety nets.
Mana, 42 Blossom St, Manchester M4 6BF.
