CityLife Rating
Juniper
I AM going to buckle down and tighten my belt…Well, very soon. But the best-laid plans can go as awry as a nest-egg in Iceland. Between a Northern Rock and a hard place, I’m still a soft touch. Breast-beating isn’t in order, though. Sheer joy can’t be counted in simple currency.
No sooner had I lamented a very large bill for very plain food at The Lowry last week than with indecent haste I stumped up the largest amount I’ve ever spent while reviewing a restaurant in these pages. Almost certainly the largest amount I ever will spend. And believe me, it all still feels worth it.
It’s hard to feel short-changed when a chef has taken the trouble to reduce veal stock over 84 hours, then gently poached langoustines in it for a further six to form the centrepiece of a pearl barley risotto.
Intensely suffused with a crustace jus from the langoustine shell, this was a signature dish writ large.
Dewy-eyed nostalgia
In one taste it wiped away any dewy-eyed nostalgia for previous Juniper incumbent Paul Kitching. It’s like losing your star striker and discovering his replacement is his equal and may prove even better.
I could hardly review the new regime up on The Downs incognito (even in one of my selection of false beards). The previous night I’d stood in front of 350 folk at the Citylife.co.uk Manchester Food and Drink Festival gala dinner and presented Best Restaurant Award.
The new man at Juniper, Michael Riemenschneider, had handed out one of the other gongs. Next year this newcomer from Switzerland via Cornwall may be on the receiving end of an award or two himself.
It won’t be for Casual Dining. A la carte starters at the opulently refurbished restaurant are £12, mains £25, puddings £9.50, with few bottles of wine under £20.
The basic menu degustation with wines will only give you a quid change from a hundred - and that’s what we had at the giant Swiss’s insistence ‘to show you what I can do’.
Smitten with the service
My evening’s companion, Genievre, was quite smitten with this former ice hockey player. Bully for her, I say. I was smitten with the service.
Michael has shut his Penzance Michelin one-starrer, The Abbey, for six weeks for refurbishment and shipped his entire kitchen brigade up to Altrincham, but front of house, under the canny eye of restaurant manager Tanguy Ernotte, is recruited from the north west’s top-end establishments. It shows.
Expansive is the mood. The downstairs bar is now a more soothing place. The 40-cover dining room seems more spacious. Dark wood and cream walls have replaced the green and gilt, the bubbly glass lobby of Kitching’s Juniper.
The only distraction to the essential concentration on the plate in front of you is a large glass artwork specially commissioned from Stockport artist Claire Wright.
Contemporary note
Where a reproduction of Uccello’s Renaissance Battle of San Romano once hung (it is now covered in a sheet behind the scenes awaiting a charity auction) Ms Wright’s swirling depiction of dark waves linking Manchester and Penzance now strikes a more contemporary note.
‘‘At these prices, in these times, let’s hope Schneider Man is waving not drowning,’’ whispered Genievre, whose regular presence at the previous incarnation and unnaturally pale skin led people to believe she was the resident ghost.
Tasting menus are often wraithlike things, more style than substance. Not the one paraded before us with a not unpleasant theatricality. Cloches are still cloches when they are small, white and porcelain, but I can forgive.
Small glasses of accompanying wines were mainly white because of a fish-heavy – actually not heavy in the slightest – tendency. Like the food, there was hardly a false note.
Massive lines
We’ll proceed chronologically. As with Paul Kitching’s quirkier ingredientfests or the large menu degustation at L’Enclume in Cartmel, there is always a feeling of ‘‘You’ll be tested afterwards’’.
Initial impressions were of a chef, built on massive lines, who is gentle with his raw materials, letting each part of a dish speak for itself softly.
Take the braised chicken attended upon by a chicken consommé and a chicken cappuccino (a foam by any other name). This was almost very superior invalid food until a strategic caper berry gave it a whoosh of the Med.
Riemenschneider is sourcing the majority of his fish from Newlyn in Cornwall. Our second course of pan-fried scallop answered the question: why? So many scallops are rubbery apologies. This one you could peel little strips of tender, sweet flesh from.
Nutty slick
Classic accompaniment cauliflower came in both a nuttly slick and (shades of the departed Kitching) an intense dried powder, while equally classic match bacon came in foam form. The bacon hailed from Alsace. No, I don’t know either.
Each course so far had been tagged simply Chicken, Scallop, Langoustine, as if by some kitchen alchemy the chef with the complex name was trying reach the very essence of each headlining ingredient. So on to Pea!
This was perhaps the closest to an over-elaborating false note, though it looked equally beautiful on the plate.
Pea was represented by a thin veloute and a thicker pure. Genievre found her smoked snail lurking among the pea products ‘gross’. I found the exquisite slice of nutmeggy black pudding didn’t need to be encased in tortellini and the garlic foam just confused matters.
Fresh and very fine
I love braised lettuce and the near caramelised baby gems alongside cannon of lamb in (you guessed it) Lamb were sweet and succulent.
This was my ‘main’ – with white bean puree and gnocchi, a nicely judged combo – though I also begged two creamy slices of flagging Genievre’s sea bass.
This had been pan-fried and was served, in a Waldorf salad-style twist, with celery grapes and apple puree, the fish again fresh and very fine.
There was a pre-dessert and two desserts Plum and Chocolate. It should have been Plums because both white and red had been poached in Sauternes. Almond ice cream and a tiny doughnut accompanied.
Exotic edge
Chocolate tarte wouldn’t have been my choice from the carte, but this was a quality act with crisp pastry, coconut espuma and pineapple sorbet giving it an exotic edge as we segued into coffee.
This Juniper is a bold venture in these straitened times, when maybe the course sequence ought to be Gruel, Offal, Potato and Jam.
I am obviously an instant fan but not one with deep pockets. Alas, I know I’m going to find its quality irresistible, as will the Michelin inspectors, I’m sure.
So if any banker still feeling flush or a rich widow with unfrozen assets wants to treat a poor food critic…
Juniper, 21 The Downs, Altrincham (0161 929 4008). DISABLED ACCESS: tbc. Five stars for everything
Reviewed: Mon, 20 October, 2008
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