BIZARRE and The Rabbit In The Moon are perfect bedfellows, but the oddity of the chef who jumped the ‘Space Age Asian cuisine’ mothership takes it into the outer galaxies.
One minute head chef Luke Cockerill is telling trade website Staff Canteen of his commitment to the future of the provocative restaurant on top of Urbis, the next he has departed.
Amicably, according to tweets from his bosses Gary Neville and Michael O’Hare, who thank him for the job he has done in the past eight months since opening. O’Hare apparently will man the RITM stoves in his stead.
Quite odd when you realise how much he already has on his plate – his Michelin-starred Man Behind The Curtain is set to expensively relocate to a different part of the Flannels store in Leeds this autumn, when we expect to see his two new Manchester restaurant projects with G&G launch in the old Manchester Stock Exchange – Are Friends Electric and The Man Who Fell To Earth.
Where now for Cockerill (above right, with O’Hare), at 23 very much protege of high profile O’Hare? He told The Caterer magazine in an abrupt leaving note he was "looking forward to the future and exploring different opportunities.”
Surely he might have waited until after the upcoming 2017 Manchester Food and Drink Awards, where he is shortlisted for Chef of the Year? Reward for playful, technically brilliant dishes such as the 'crispy rabbit ears' pictured.
And why the upbeat video interview with Staff Canteen shortly before when he says: “Working with Mike, for Mike, got me to this place. I’m not thinking of leaving because this restaurant, this opportunity for me, is just about making this work and everything I’m thinking ahead is to with this restaurant because there’s so much to do and so much scope and there will alway be when you’ve got a creative platform.”
Other top-end restaurant transitions in the city have been more seamless, to say the least. Simon Rogan handed over the reins at The French to Adam Reid, who had been at the stove from the start and Aiden Byrne’s ‘move upstairs’ to consultant at Living Ventures handed over the reins to trusted sous chef Nat Tofan.
But full Moon, full story? We’ll have wait and see.