WE can take it for granted the team from Viet Shack have never cooked in a kitchen as capacious as Vermilion’s or served up their Vietnamese specialities in a dining room as glamorous. Be it in their Arndale Market base or on one of their street food forays, it’s a tight squeeze behind the stove and a case of grab a stool by the Arndale Micro Bar to guzzle your Banh-mi baguette.
Such restrictions didn’t stop Nelson Lam’s fast food take on Vietnamese home cooking from scooping Best Cheap Eats at the 2014 Manchester Food and Drink Festival. Now Nelson’s hinting at some TV exposure ahead and the Shack’s increasing profile was further confirmed by this invitation to open Vermilion’s series one-off Guest Nights featuring the finest street food and supper club operators around.
How did the street cred translate to a £35 five course tasting menu (plus in our case a series of exquisite matching wines courtesy of general manager Adrian Ranea)? Brilliantly as it turned out. Back in the city centre the Chinese New Year was being celebrated with a spectacular light show in St Ann’s Square; here up near SportCity the culinary display was no less illuminating as the guests unleashed a more authentic Vietnamese home dining experience.
From the king prawn summer roll with a fiery peanut sauce through to a dessert the likes of which I’ve never had before – baked pan dan cake with a ginger and lime crumble, lemon grass ice cream and a lychee – it was a delciate, sensory triumph of spice and fragrance.
The main course was a noodle soup. The national dish Pho, of course. Simplicity itself in its eight-hour beef broth, if a mite over-substantial for some fellow diners. Not for us. It was a natural progression from little rolls of lemongrass flavoured beef wrapped in betel leaves, followed by shredded chicken and prawn in heaped pickled salad with prawn crackers (finger food – my favourite).
Vermilion, whose own primarily Thai and Indian food has won consistent plaudits, is to be congratulated on this initiative to link up with small food operations to showcase the current culinary melting pot that is Manchester.
For further details on the Guestraunt Nights visit this TOM link. To book ring 0161 202 0055 or [email protected]. Follow @vermilionuk / www.vermilion.uk.com/events. March 16-19 is Vermilion’s Seafood Festival.
Vermilion Restaurant & Cinnabar, Lord North Street/Hulme Hall Lane, Manchester, M40 8AD. 0161 202 0055.
The dishes (in order, minus the Pho) are below
