RESTAURANTS named after ingredients I’ve always had a problem with. Even when there are damned good examples around – Damson, Brassica, Beef and Pudding. And don’t forget Gordon Ramsay began his Michelin-starred ascent to greatness at a Chelsea joint called Aubergine.
Ancoats is a long way from Chelsea but its newly spawned restaurant culture reads like an upmarket shopping list. Well maybe not Rudy’s Pizza. That’s called after the owners’ dog. But their Fairbairn Building neighbour, opening soon, is Goose Fat & Wild Garlic (run by a former Ramsay employee) and then there’s a newcomer that has made it beyond the pipedream stage – Squid Ink.
I didn’t expect that black gooey extraction to feature in the actual dishes there but a visit to Anthony Barnes’s singular venture – and I mean singular – wasn’t going to provide options anyway with a £25 five course tasting menu, no alternatives until pudding (or there’s a £15 three courser Tues-Thurs).
It’s probably best like this. Ancoats-raised chef/proprietor Anthony is his own man literally. Sole cook, often serving you himself so he can explain the composition of dish. My main was a while coming as we discussed his attitude to design. This a seriously pretty, uncluttered space, sandwiched between Ancoats General Store and gym-themed clean-eating diner Kettlebell Kitchen.
So I ask the one-man band, who is serving 16 covers at dinner six days a week: “You are going to need a holiday some time”. “Oh, I probably will, but I’ll probably close for a week and spend the time replacing the chairs or repolishing the table tops.”
Two weeks in, there’s no sign of a tiny scuff yet. I think he ought to be addressing my chicken with green curry spiced rice. Should I be flummoxed by this degree of self-obsession? I’m actually charmed and in no hurry as the sun blazes in across six lane Great Ancoats Street, just an Ashton-bound bus or bulked up Kettlebeller casting a shadow over this lone diner.
]There is ample footfall in such a happening area and while I was there several folk popped in to inquire about availability. That’s always going to be a squeeze with Squid Ink’s policy of book a table and it’s yours for the night. Besides the 16 covers, scattered in twos and fours with plenty of space between there’s also a long refectory table for drinkers, which is odd since the drinks list would never convince you it’s a bar.
An idealist at work then. With stamina. The one chef/set menu route works at some classy places, including one of my favourites, the Michelin-starred Mr Underhill’s In Ludlow, but that’s four days a week, a nine-course tasting menu costing £75 and income from rooms in the idyllic premises. A different proposition.
Success at Squid Ink hangs on the consistency of the food being compatible with a market-led, eclectic, globally influenced cuisine at bargain prices. So what did I make of the food? Promising but a mixed bag.
First up was roasted butternut squash, toasted seeds, lemongrass and coconut velouté, which I liked for its undertow of chilli heat, lifting what was basically a thick pumpkinesque soup with seed crunch.
Pig cheek, hazelnut, nasturtium, apple (below) was supposed to be course two but had been flipped forward because apparently its flavours apparently obliterated the original course three. I couldn’t see this, apart from a certain nasturtium-led pepperiness. The eight hour sous-vided cheek lacked flavour, though fine on texture.
The new No.2 in contrast was the stand-out dish of the evening (it’s our lead picture, too). Grilled, peach, mozzarella with mint and a sweet garlic/chilli dressing is a bit Ottolenghi meets Masterchef for a dinner party but still gorgeous. I accompanied it with a gorgeous Hitachino Nest Beer, the Saison du Japon, made from sake malt and infused with yuzu. I’d drunk it before at Yuzu the eponymous restaurant, where it’s a house Japanese beer. Here it was a one-off. The normal beer array is Brightside (good) and Peroni (dull).
The wine list is three reds, three whites and prosecco, only two by the glass – ruled by budgetary constraints to avoid waste – and sipping a large glass of Les Oliviers Merlot Mourvèdre, I realised would have been better value to spend £15 a bottle on this excellent garrigue-led Languedoc red and taken the remains of the bottle home.
Alas, it didn’t really partner the main of charred corn-fed chicken breast with a green curry sauce with pine nuts. The chicken supposedly had been finished in the green egg barbecue I so envied behind the immaculate finishing station, but, like the pork cheek, it was bland and decidedly uncharred. The accompanying rice was subtly spiced, but it wasn’t enough to be memorable.
For pud, I eschewed citrus cheesecake in favour of poached apple crumble, whose toasted almond crumble over thankfully solid apple chunks was matched by a sumptuous almond custard.
A colleague’s preview of Squid Ink reported Anthony was going to rotate his repertoire of 400 dishes and promised the likes of pork cheek tonkatsu with apple and Szechuan pepper puree and apple napa cabbage salad, a slow-cooked spicy Sri Lankan lamb curry or a modern take on jerk chicken or goat curry in homage to his Jamaican roots. It all sounds good but the initial tasting menu lacks such oomph. Be bolder, we say, and invest in a sous chef. Squid Ink could become an essential destination… or sadly just a solo voyage too far.
Squid Ink, Unit 4, Nuovo, 67 Great Ancoats Street, Manchester, M4 5AB. 0161 236 7258.
