IT’s not quite our idea of hell but bottomless brunches do make us feel queasily excessive. Among the classier examples is Gaucho’s Electro Brunch each Saturday, where for £45.95 a head between 11am and 4pm you can book two hours of unlimited drinks and dishes, consumed to a cool beats soundtrack. What makes it attractive are brunch specials such as their choripan sandwich (with chorizo and chimichurri) and the salt beef-based Gaucho Benedict.
Despite these treats our weekend preference at the city centre Argentine steakhouse is for Sunday’s mellower chill-out, the Gospel Brunch. Here Roast meets Soul with Malbec from one Manchester’s finest wine lists as a laidback lubricant (we considered buying a second bottle of the 2015 Atamisque Uco Valley, but at 14.5 per cent we might have ended up later snoozing through Call The Midwife. Aided by portion sizes that might have felled an actual gaucho.
The musical accompaniment on our visit? ’Gospel’ had suggested we might be serenaded by a troupe of Whoopi Goldbergs. Instead we got a sleek, mellow soundtrack from a quartet called Elect Sound, harmonising up in the mezzanine balcony of this one-time Methodist mega church. The organ pipes are still in situ and the acoustics are glorious.
Elect Sound is apparently a musical moveable feast with a changing roster of performers centred around Didsbury chanteuse Elva Parinaud and a keyboard player. Here the line-up was Elva, Mark, Lisanse and Nathan, the repertoire what I’d call lounge soul with classics such as Let It Be and My Girl given a restrained gospelly treatment. Soothing stuff, with occasions injections of vocal passion from Elva (I almost spilt my Malbec).
The Gospel Brunch is available from 2pm-5pm and you can choose between a Sunday Roast and the a la carte. We did both.
After winning the battle for the upmarket chain’s survival, the new regime has made some changes, broadening the range of dishes and expanding its take on the rest of South America (‘nuevos’). This reflected in the starters with the likes of cured red Patagonian prawn tiradito, a kind of Peruvian fish carpaccio, where the raw fish is cubed and sauced rather than marinated beforehand and, our favourite, tuna and charred palmito ceviche (£13.50) that is palate cleansing personified with its elaborate dressing of grapefruit, coriander, pomegranate and popping yuzu pearls.
Remaining starter stalwarts include exemplary beef empanadas and buttermilk fried molleja. These are sweetbreads coated in aji amarillo batter, deep fried and slathered in spicy saffron sauce with pickled Guindilla chilli, a more than ample portion for £8.50.
More than ample also sums up ‘all the trimmings that accompanied my rareish roast sirloin of beef (£20) – bowls of mashed swede, cabbage and onion, a standout cheesy gratin of cauli and broccoli, roastie spuds by the ton and Yorkshire pudding cooked in beef dripping (you can ask for extra puds but that would make you Homer Simpson). The beef came with red wine gravy; I got horseradish, too, on request.
All the beef here is still from Argentina – from Black Angus cattle “grazing on 17 different types of grass from the Pampas provinces" and wet-aged. On the whole we’re in the dry ageing camp, but wet works well here, a ‘Lomo’ fillet steak (225g £30.50, 400g £48), still tender and full of flavour when rescued from the doggie back several hours later just as Call The Midwife started.
Gaucho, 2A St Mary's Street, Manchester, M3 2LB. 0161 833 4333. Sunday Roast is £20 – beef sirloin, roast potatoes and unlimited, beef-dripping Yorkshire puddings. Check out Eva Parinaud’s vocal coaching and singing therapy classes, based in Didsbury via this link.
