AVOIDING a couple of over-the-top tackles from souvenir-toting over-enthusiastic tourists outside the National Football Museum, ToM couldn’t help noticing the signs saying Cafe Football Opening May.
It took us back to our enjoyable visit to the Gary Neville/Ryan Giggs-run operation (below) inside their Hotel Football next to Old Trafford (we love the hotel’s rooftop five-a-side pitch).
OK, it was never going to be a culinary Theatre of Dreams but the American diner influenced offering worked well, possibly down to the influence of consultant chef, two Michelin-starred Michael Wignall.
His career has moved on, taking over the starry country house kitchens at Gidleigh Park from Michael Caines and severing his ties with Cafe Football.
This now comes under the remit, we presume, of GG Hospitality’s creative director Michael O’Hare, whose upmarket ‘space-age Asian’ restaurant, The Rabbit In The Moon now resides on the top two floors of Urbis, above the National Football Museum.
We couldn’t resist a sneak peek the menu on the website, which appears to distance itself from the laddy banter of the food titles at Hotel Football and the original Cafe Football in London’s Docklands.
Gone are the nibble sof the Pre-match Warm Up, Scholesy’s Steak Pudding, Nev’s Noodle Pot and Giggsy’s Red Dragon Sausages, while The Boss burger has gone the way of Sir Alex (so no chance for a David Moyes slap-up feast).
In, from £40 for three courses, are a variety of determinedly un-jokey set menus – unless you get a laugh out of pork three ways – though a groundsman’s salad does roll up, featuring crispy quail’s egg, goat’s milk puree, hazelnut and truffle.
If that all sound a bit far distant from a swift balti pie and punt there are more affordable bowls, costing £7.95 a go plus a promise of available bespoke menus. Couldn’t spot a prawn sandwich, mind.