IT’S not the kind of dish you’d associate with Bangers and Bacon or their carnivorous offshoot Well Hung. Look at it: scallops, cod and curried fondant potato with shallot puree. So have the Leftbank Kitchens trio whose motto was “We put the piggy in the middle” sold out to the dark forces of clean eating?
Not so. Check out another course in a dinner previewing their new venture, BEASTro: lamb loin with Bury black pudding accompanied by minted pea, carrot, roast potato and pancetta.
That’s more like it, you might say, but in truth through their Chef’s Table supper clubs Richard Brown and James and Heather Taylor have long been banishing the porcine-centric stereotypes.
In the course of which they have also been crowned winners of The Kitchens street food start-up contest. Hence BEASTro occupying one whole side of the six-unit Kitchens complex as they expand into the areas once home to rival tenants Mumma Schnitzel and Hip Hop Chip Shop.
There’s backing from landlords Allied London, but the hard graft to turn the site into a permanent restaurant falls to its proud chef/patrons. It may be a month or so before it’s all ready: in the meantime, true to their street food origins (which kicked off at the 2014 Festival No.6), they’ll be running a pop-up outside.
James tells us: “The expansion means we can grow beyond the public perception of Bangers & Bacon as solely about bacon butties. That brand name will live on for street food projects as will Well Hung, but the new plans go much further.
“We will continue to open for breakfast and at weekends for brunches, which have been hugely popular. In the evenings the food will develop from the kind of one-off ‘Beastro’ supper clubs and chef's tables we have done with the likes of Robert Owen Brown (between, Richard and James, below).”
Not that it’s just intimate bistro evenings ahead. The breakfast menu is a priority, sourcing locally, including hand made sausages and bacon from their own in-house butchers, Bobby’s Bangers. Lunch trade will be a range of gourmet sandwiches and salads, and hot dishes available for ‘grab and go’.
ToM would recommend the bacon swirls (pictured below with a spoon of fried egg and steak). Well, we told you it wasn’t all ‘clean eating’.
BEASTro, The Kitchens Leftbank, Spinningfields, Manchester, M3 3AG.
