CityLife

Isinglass English Dining Rooms

I WAS asked the other day to go on radio to discuss ‘my dream job as a restaurant critic’ but had to decline because of food poisoning.

Don’t snigger. My current Delhi Belly, legacy of a trip to (yes, you guessed it) Delhi, meant I couldn’t guarantee staying in the studio long enough even to convince my less than sympathetic questioner ‘it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it’.

This debilitation made the train journey to Urmston all the more fraught, but I rallied after a restorative bottle of Belgian beer in the excellent Steamhouse conversion on the platform there.

It was a case of ‘pull yourself together. . . Jay Rayner or Anton Ego have the constitution of the Iron Man and so have you’.

Swim bladder of the sturgeon

The odd nomenclature of Isinglass, my destination in the west, doesn’t help. It sounds like somewhere with lots of turrets and an evil wizard in Lord Of The Rings, but the name actually derives from the swim bladder of the sturgeon.

A form of collagen, it was employed prior to gelatine, to make jellies and is now primarily for clarifying beer and wine.

The moniker just suits the deliberately homespun, locally-sourced food mecca in a former bakery, a place where nettles go into soup, other greens get frittered and, for the sweet-toothed, possets and syllabubs are plucked from old cookbooks.

It recently co-hosted a foraging day on Urmston Meadow, which is where I picked up on it again.

High octane horseradish

I also picked up an astonishing number of edible plants from the cracks in the Urmston pavements as well as overdosing on high octane wild horseradish along the boggy riverbank.

Till then, following the departure of high-profile chef Lisa Walker over a year ago, Isinglass had rather fallen off my radar.

Trained in California kitchens after studying to be a criminal psychologist, Walker cut a glamorous figure as a scholar cook, winning Manchester Food and Drink Awards’ Chef of the year in 2005. She was a hard act to follow.

The kitchen has obviously re-grouped under the same ethical template, head chef Anthony Dunbar and ownerJulie Bagnoli, so much so that Isinglass is among the nominees for 2009 restaurant of the year.

Slightly dispiriting

The cosy dining room with solid oak dominating and swirly, hippyish wall decorations looked as inviting as ever. Which made our slightly dispiriting Thursday evening all the more surprising.

My constitution had re-grouped, so no blaming that. It didn’t help that service was of the friendly rather than the totally together variety and our La Fou pinot noir from the Languedoc (£18.50) was not the ‘really great pinot noir!’ trumpeted on the list (on recycled paper naturally), just thin.

The Isinglass summer menu is apparently just about to change. I hope they retain my companion, the Dark Lord Sauron’s potted crab with pickled samphire (£4.95), which was fresh and clean.

Bit rubbery

My devilled lamb’s kidneys (£5.50) had the slightest tang of urine about them (which is a good thing) but were also a bit rubbery (which is not). The mustardy dressing was Elvishly sharp but the broad bean potato cake was a glum Ork of a component.

With the mains came proof of the sort of sourcing rotation that keeps the template fresh but…

Standard chunky green calabrese was substituted for the side of purple sprouting broccoli we had ordered because the season was now past. It was complimentary.

Lord Sauron’s main was to have been a variation on the classic skate with black butter and capers. Our waiter was swiftly back with ‘skate’s off, it’s bream – with the same sauce’. Sauron, a stickler, glowered.

Bream with black butter is just wrong. His substitute dish was grilled mackerel. Very well-grilled mackerel on a plate unharmoniously swamped with slices of fennel and red onion and chunks of scalloped potatoes (£11.95).

Clumsy dish

 It was a clumsy dish, as was my honeycomb tripe and Lancashire chorizo with Jersey royals and vine tomatoes (£10.95), which lacked coherence.

The shards of unbleached tripe were completely overwhelmed by the sheer mass of chorizo, whatever its provenance. Cheese to the rescue.

The artisan cheese selection (£3.95) with Stilton outstanding tempered the wrath of the Dark Lord.

A lovely valpolicella ripasso red also warmed our mood, but my parfait wrapped in fronds of rhubarb (£4.75) was again awkward.

Laid-back vibe

Isinglass is the kind of neighbourhood restaurant we’d like to have around the corner, providing affordable, informal dishes from well-sourced ingredients against a laid-back vibe. It wasn’t quite fulfilling its aspirations on the night we were there.

Perhaps it was merely the curse of Sauron.

Isinglass, 46 Flixton Road, Urmston (0161 749 8400).

Tweet