CityLife

Does Manchester have an odd dining scene?

I CAN’T agree with top restaurant guide Harden’s latest conclusions about dining out in Manchester. The 2010 guide is out now and declares that the city centre “has perhaps the oddest restaurant scene in the UK”.

Based on 8,000 restaurant- goers nationwide, Harden’s says there are a number of restaurants in the city worthy of praise – many inexpensive – and so its overall ‘star count’ in the guide is up with the UK’s other leading restaurant city (outside London), Edinburgh.

But it says that unlike the Scottish capital, Manchester city centre itself “manages totally to lack any non-ethnic restaurants of real note”.

The real kick in the teeth comes when Harden’s lists five top-level restaurants in Birmingham!

Maybe Harden’s did not realise how important hotels are to the dining experience in Manchester, with Obsidian, City Cafe, The Glasshouse, and The French at The Midland being notable examples, among others.

Strange then that runner-up to the top restaurant in the UK – Mr Underhill’s in Ludlow – is Gidleigh Park, Michael Caine’s place in Devon, from which he exported his expertise to . . . Manchester, at another city centre hotel, Abode.

The survey recommends eating Chinese in the city – citing Yang Sing and Wings – and says that the popularity of English cooking is the highest in the country, the chophouses being examples.

Other food news...

ONE very English chef in the city is going Scottish later this month. On Monday, January 25, Robert Owen Brown’s Mark Addy pub is celebrating Burns’ Night with a £45 four-course meal, including cullen skink and haggis with neeps and tatties.

ON January 21, Obsidian’s bar will host the north west heat of Drambuie’s national cocktail competition. The hotel’s head barman Tom Lloyd – who won Manchester Food And Drink Festival bartender of the year in 2009 – will be one of 11 contestants who have to create and mix two original cocktails.