SO what if David Silva and Juan Mata weren’t sharing a seafood platter in one of the bright yellow booths? It was late lunchtime after all. Perhaps they were still training hard for that great Premier League run-in, subtitled “will either Manchester club qualify for the Champions League?”
La Bandera MD Yashin Dadashnejad – as proud a son of Tenerife as City’s Silva (pictured below with Yashin), a regular customer of his restaurant – is more concerned with Spain’s prospects at the Euros. As I suspect are the majority of his clientele, over 60 per cent of which hail from there, including the city’s entire Spanish football contingent. Bandera means flag and they are not afraid to fly it.
It’s like the hoary cliche about Chinatown – always dine where the Chinese themselves dine. Except, of course, you often got fobbed off with the Western-friendly menu minus all those rehydrated sea cucumbers and gelatinous/cartilaginous offcuts. The ‘queer stuff’ might want to try the once in the quest for authenticity.
Well, Spain’s different. We are all familiar with tapas – or pintxos, if you want to explore your inner Basque? Such small plate dining has locked contemporary manchester in a warm Iberian embrace. Within a pelota smash of Deansgate El Gato Negro recently joined Iberica, Lunya and best of the old stalwarts, Evuna with Tapeo imminent in the Onward Buildings.
La Bandera, open just over a year, is in the same zone, on Ridgefield in the premises that housed Harper’s for what seemed like decades and then 2Kosy for thankfully fleeting moments. Now with its gleaming yellow leather seating, scarlet lampshades and staff whose welcome is equally glowing it is a little outpost of the Canary Islands. My waitress is from Tenerife, the new sommelier Ottavio from Gran Canaria.
Hugely experienced, he is charged with improving what is an unambitious wine list. My large £8.25 glass of Entreflores Verdejo from Rueda was tired for a white style I usually love. Happily the food was as vivid as the surroundings, a match for its rivals in the great Culinary Armada.
Admittedly I constrained myself by tackling a trio of starters as tapas, which would cost £22.40 on the a la carte but ran in at just £15.95 on the 12pm-4pm lunch special offer.
Since I couldn’t resist the Pulpo a la Gallego (Octopus Galician style), which was a dish excluded from the offer I added it to the feast. At £10.95 it’s slight dearer than El Gato Negro’s Pulpo, which comes with capers, shallots and alioli. La Bandera’s is more classic and less salty, grilled with smoked paprika and potato slices. It also comes with a dinky deep-fried feather-shaped squid pen (backbone).
No escaping potatoes, a speciality of the native islands. Papas Arrugadas con Mojo (£6.45) offered baby spuds, prematurely wrinkled with a duo of spicy, garlicky sauces, green and red, the smaller tubers ethereally puffed inside their skins.
Exec chef Josetxo Arrieta has a cv that includes the world famous Akelarre just outside San Sebastian, a course with Ferran Adria and Michelin two-starred establishments in France but there’s nothing molecular gastronomic about this offering, gracias a dios.
Still there was a rare finesse to the quartet of Croquetas de Chipirón (£7.95) that turned up next. Cut into, they revealed the sweetest of squid pureed in it own ink.
My Carrilleras de cerdo (£8.50) topped even that dish. These Iberian pigs cheeks had been slow cooked for eight hours, first in a veg bouillon then in a Pedro Ximenez sauce, its treaclel/prune flavours pervading the melting flesh.
Ever impressionable, this dictated I completed the lunch with a glass of that same luscious sherry, perfect to accompany La Bandera’s triple chocolate mousse (white and dark on a crisp biscuit base) with a slick of intense raspberry puree. Besides the standard PX Nectar my waitress chucked in a taste of the less sweet 1927 Pedro Ximenez to compete a memorable lunch. Food of champions. Definite consolation, if West Ham do grab that fourth Champions League slot.
La Bandera, 2 Ridgefield, Manchester, Lancashire M2 6EQ. 0161 833 9019.
