By Neil Sowerby
WEDNESDAY night and a birthday party is in full swing. First the booze flows in the cosy upstairs bar, now the celebrants are making discreet whoopee in the main dining room, bedecked with balloons. It’s a 70th and there’s a stubborn insistence on the culinary centrepiece – it has to be belly pork with apple sauce for mains (which look excellent) and their own brought-in choice of wine with corkage (most has already been consumed, so they’ll soon have to consult the wine list for top-ups).
Grenache caters for this. Of course, it does. When, like Mike Jennings, you are a chef/proprietor in a hardly prosperous area an epic taxi ride out of city centre Manchester this kind of midweek block booking is manna from heaven, bolstering the revenues beyond weekends that are consistently booked up.
Through all this we are not being neglected by an affable front of house team. We are here for the £49.50 seven-course Tasting Menu – happy to be at the chef’s mercy. Well into the evening a pair of young couples drop in on spec and, on our recommendation, fancy trying this option, too, which can take up to three hours. Alas, it’s going to be a more stretched experience with all those belly porks on the go first, so they are advised to come back another time for this. It would have been so easy to take their dosh, but Grenache has standards...
And aspirations – ratcheted up a level since Mike Jennings moved from head chef to take over the business last year. If you could bottle enthusiasm and dreams it would have the heady fizz of Mike. Ambition is evident in this neighbourhood restaurant’s ‘trophy cabinet’, plaudits from the AA and the Good Food Guide; Taste of Salford’s best restaurant for the fourth year running; and the kind of restless yearning for a Michelin star that’s born out of Mike culinary education.
The Stretford lad has cooked in some top kitchens – for Gary Rhodes, Nigel Haworth and, most influentially, Shaun Rankin on Jersey. The week we visited Walkden Rankin was up north with a platoon of fellow telegenic chefs recreating their ‘D-Day’ Great British Menu victory dishes at Northcote’s prestigious Obsessions Festival.
This is the company Mike aspires to. But does the food live up to the dreams? I’m not sure yet on the evidence of the Tasting Menu. Accomplished, meticulous, overcoming the distractions of that evening’s main event, yes, but the parade of dishes didn’t storm the palate quite enough.
Stand-outs came early. There was real citrus bite to the beetroot and fennel escabeche that sat under a gleamingly fresh tranche of grilled mackerel and the net two dishes surpassed this, partly down to some seriously accomplished baking going on backstage.
Into a treacly brown, unctuous French onion soup we got to dunk an equally unctuous crumpet oozing Mrs Kirkham’s Lancashire cheese, lifted by a dash of Worcester sauce. Then the most playful dish, foie gras with a savoury rhubarb crumble and cubes of amazing gingerbread.
This was accompanied appropriately by a shot of Muscat Beaumes de Venise (Domaine de Durban, my favourite). We had a quartet of matching wines from the by the glass list from a soft crisp white Rioja called Larchago through to the portlike Banyuls with the pud. Such a line-up would add £30 a head to the bill.
Mike was trying out a squid ink risotto on us, partnering quite substantially a chunk of herb-crusted monkfish and an obligatory scattering of samphire.
An intense, slightly challenging course, followed by a ‘meat and potato’ main that just seemed dull. The rump of lamb felt slightly functional, smothered in and dominated by redcurrants the fondant potato was dark and over-salty, the salsify, a favourite veg of mine, adding nothing. I enjoyed the haricot puree and spinach, but too much was happening on the plate.
That was almost the case with our main pud (after a little lemon posset and raspberry pre-dessert) which twinned a hefty chocolate fondant with a generous scoop of minty choc chip ice cream in a sesame tuile. We worked our way through it and were glad we did.
The whole meal was an excellent experience, hence the five star rating, and it was good to discover that going it alone after the buy-out is paying off (now they are opening for lunch Thu-Sat) for Mike and his wife, Karen, previously front of house at Simon Rogan and Aiden Byrne establishments.
The pair’s aim is for similar stellar recognition for little Grenache. It will be fascinating to see if they can make the dream come true.
Grenache, 15 Bridgewater Rd, Walkden, Worsley, Manchester M28 3JE 0161 799 8181.
