Industrial, modern, high ceilings, with a lovely relaxed vibe and a brilliant looking open kitchen and bar to the left.  Bright ceiling to floor windows to the right gave most seats a window view.  It feels ideal for what is a casual neighbourhood bar and kitchen.  

Based on what it is, not much to grumble about.  Simple and minimal are not always bad points.

Good produce and indeed some pretty unique produce to boot.  Added to that, novel dishes and solid cooking help to assemble a strong case here.  Generally, the value on the plate isn’t debatable based on what you'd expect to pay for an experience on this level. 

Some wines stray over that x3 RRP mark-up, which is a little on the heavy side in casual dining rooms/bars.

Friendly welcome, knowledgeable guidance, and extremely passionate about the product.  We were made aware of any sold out items ahead of ordering, wine glasses were topped up, and they dealt with an issue on one of our dishes like utmost pros, with no quibble at all. Generally, for the level of dining room being critiqued here, we had no complaints and gladly left a tip without any shrapnel in it.

Nothing comes to mind in all honesty.

Small and large plates is the game here, or starters and mains as a fossil like me still sees them as. The menu is riddled with modern spins on things, unusual produce, modern technique, and things that you mostly see in places charging more than this.  The menu boded well for what lay ahead.

To begin; a variety of bread with some sublime beef butter.  It was more toast than bread, but all good. That butter though..... order extra. One ramekin is plenty, but still. 

Starters were Pig's Head Croquettes; 2 crumbed and deep fried nuggets of shredded pig head, plated with some house made piccalilli; one of my favourite food items in the world.  This was a good version, working well with the fatty croquette as intended. 

Jerusalem Artichokes with goat's cheese was a taste and textural sensation. Usually when ordering artichokes, you'll get the globe version.  Seeing whole Jerusalems celebrated on the plate, presented in their natural form rather than Robot Coupe'd into a posh soup, was great.  Earthy, sweet, and well cooked, with that slightly tart yet creamy cheese balancing things out.  I could drop in a ton more aimlessly overused food article terms about this one, but won't bother.  It was just pure quality and possibly the dish of the night.  

Retired Dairy Cow Sirloin was great to see on a menu, which is why I'm going to bend your ear a bit.  I don’t usually order steaks on write ups because they photo badly, and are well, just a steak with not much to blurb about regardless of how good it is in truth.  But, we've only quite recently caught on to eating retired cows here in the UK, hence it's become quite trendy, albeit not something you see much of in Mcr.  

Steaks generally come from young cows which have been bred to slaughter at around 3 years old.  Now the Spanish cottoned on to using old 15+ year old dairy cow meat as steaks decades ago. Here in the UK, farmers will typically send the old cows away to be made into cheap processed items once their milking days are done with.  The meat isn’t quite as tender or delicate as you'd expect from a young animal, but the massive flavour imparted by those years of graft more than makes up for that, and also gives you a meaty, firm, almost semi-cured texture.  

This rendition was great.  Sourced from Yorkshire; it came with chunky wedge chips and a side of ox cheek and marrow cauli cheese, which added even more richness to the plate.  Overall, a satisfying plate of beefy goodness.  

However…… The pig's head croquettes were a tad dry in the middle, and needed more piccalilli to compensate.  The fondant celeriac with our lamb was a bit under in places, so hard to pass a knife through.  The steak could have been a touch pinker, the chips were arguably a little over, and cauli cheese was overly caught on top too.  We've been kind to the cauli via clever photography.  My accomplice stated, 30 seconds before it came over the pass to our table, 'something's burning'.  An industry-experienced nose is always on duty.

We sadly sent the pudding back, as the sauce was heavily grainy with uncooked sugar granules, despite also touching the edge of being caught. Lower cooking temp Chef.  This was dealt with very well though, and taken off the bill with no fuss.

Get those puddings up to the same standards as the mains. ~ Restaurants Of Manchester (12th November 2019)