Our favourite place to eat out in Manchester is… GRUB, underneath the arches near Piccadilly Station. Relaxed informality with a superb variety of quality street food vendors, from the queen of fermented Korean flavours Geordie Seoul to the quirky contemporary Turkish and Mediterranean cuisine of The Ottomen; from Jimmy the boss of Malay flavours with Nasi Lemak to the superb, award-winning Oh Mei Dumpling, the star of southern style Chinese dumplings and experimentation. Oh and of course, GRUB is venue of the annual Manchester Cider Festival and has a wide range of street food friendly quality craft Ciders and Perry.
Our favourite dining room in Manchester is… without any doubt the understated Where The Light Gets In. This sums up the vibrant, no-fuss but ’match you for quality anywhere in the world’ Manchester that we love. Entry is through an unassuming Stockport alley, no signage, just well-trodden steps up to a friendly welcome. Just like in another of our favourites, the Mana restaurant in Ancoats, all the cooking is done right in front of the diners, with shelves full of stored fermented and dried ingredients. In both the room perfectly matches the mood and food. Oh, and in each there are astonishingly accomplished sommeliers whose choice of matching natural wines is sublime.
So how did ‘WTLGI’ narrowly win the vote of the venues? Well they bribed us, sort of since they make their own home fermented cider. Knowing that we are big cider fans, the first night we dined they opened a bottle of their Pet Nat cider, gloriously acidic from the mix of apples gathered in Marple.
Our favourite lunch spot in Manchester is… in our home-town, Ashton-under-Lyne. Lily's Vegetarian is a gem and only a gentle lunchtime walk for us, or tram ride for others. It has gathered a very loyal following boosted by national reviews and a MFDF award. Thursday Thali is a weekly lunch-time joy, unlimited top ups of servings of knockout Gujarati street food, with the menu changing each week. Followed by world class cider at nearby Browtons bottle shop and bar. It may be tiny but has shelves of cider and perry supplied by the Fine Cider Co. who supply some of the top Michelin restaurants, including Tom Kerridge, whose Bull and Bear is soon to open in Manchester.
The best dish we’ve eaten in Manchester recently is… fillet ofbeef/roast cauliflower at a one-off Cider Dinner at the iconic Marble Arch. A gently roasted and basted cauliflower steak for Cath and a sous vide fillet of beef for Dick, which was ‘oh so tender’; with soft, gently buttery potatoes and rich mushrooms. A special cider was required to go with something so hearty, so the team chose a cider produced from the queen of bittersweet cider apples, the Dabinett. Raison D’Etre, from Ross Cider, is a quintessential expression of cider making, being bold, intense and effortlessly smooth. Truly great dry cider is all those things. Executive Chef Kerry Rickett and her kitchen team first visited the orchards and tasted the ciders and then cooked from their hearts at the beginning of October, producing a five-course tasting meal with matched ciders from Little Pomona Cider and Ross Cider.
If we had to drink only one thing for the rest of our days it would be… that very same Raison D’Etre cider. Producers Ross on Wye Cider and Perry were winners of Best Drinks Producer in the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2019. In 2018 they opened a two-year oak aged barrel of the Dabinett apple and exclaimed: ‘wow, that’s why we make cider’. Soft mellow tannins from bittersweet apples fermented patiently to produce a fine wine quality cider. Less than 1,200 bottles of Raison D’Etre (the reason for being for the cidermakers) were produced from 2016 pressed juice….. and a new 2017 vintage has just been made. Each vintage is a unique reflection the weather conditions of that year and the Ross Cider farm terroir. This is a cider to cherish, to store away and age as many bottles as possible. This is the one cider I will return to time after time, and on each visit, it will be a little bit different as it ages, in the same way as fine wine.)
Cider couple Cath Potter and Dick Withecombe formed Cider Buzz Mcr and together they have helped to promote a #RethinkCider campaign leading to a surge in Craft Cider, establishing Manchester as one of the cider capitals of the UK, alongside Bristol and London. They have established a monthly cider club at The Crown and Kettle in the city centre each month with a different cider producer, usually sell-outs with up to 50 cider drinkers attending.
Cath Potter is Manchester’s first cider pommelier; trained at the Beer and Cider Academy by Gabe Cook aka ‘The Ciderologist’ from TV’s The Sunday Brunch; and is a founding member of the newly formed group ‘Cider Women’. The duo are contributors to the cider magazine ‘Graftwood’ and distributors for the free national publication ‘Full Juice’. In Greater Manchester more than 500 copies are delivered each quarter across bars which stock craft cider.
Dick and Cath are pictured with Nicky Kong, bar manager of the Crown & Kettle.