The Bull & Bear, Manchester

Bull and Bear is... well, actually, I don't know what it is. I don't even think the Bull & Bear knows what it is. The name suggests a pub, another addition to the North West's phalanx of world-class boozers, except this one is set up in the grand dining hall of the new Stock Exchange hotel, with its soaring ceilings, elaborate plasterwork and plush leather seating, and feels about as much like a normal pub as does the restaurant at Claridge's. There are, admittedly - and hilariously - flatscreen TVs all around the room showing Sky Sports, but none of the seating really face them, the sound is on too low to hear anyway (thank God) and halfway through our lunch the satellite signal failed, so they just started showing powerpoint slides of the hotel rooms upstairs.

If you're wondering what kind of person thinks putting Sky Sports on the walls in the dining room of a five star hotel is a good idea, well the answer is Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs and Winston Zahra, Premier League footballers being about the demographic in the world unable to really enjoy their £9.50 pollock scotch egg without the footie on in the background. The whole venture, in fact, feels very much like Kerridge with his successful restaurant brain on was gamely pulling in one direction while Neville & Co were insisting that the menu should somehow involve a baked potato (£8.50, featuring raw steak; we weren't brave enough to try it), a Caesar salad and pints of lager on tap.

To his credit Kerridge has, thanks to his talent as a chef and experience in the field of fancy hotel restaurants (I believe his place in the Corinthia is lovely), put together a menu that tries its darndest to keep all these separate interests happy, and occasionally succeeds. The aforementioned fish scotch egg is, well, not a vast amount of food for £9.50 but seasoned properly and prettily presented even if the flavour was in the end a bit subdued.

Less successful was this dish they called a "cassoulet" but turned out to be nothing of the sort. There were no chunks of sausage, no tasty slabs of pork skin, no thick, buttery sauce around the beans and in fact if I hadn't have been told it had been cooked with pork fat could have easily assumed it was some kind of vegetarian stew. And there's nothing wrong with a vegetarian stew of course, I just hadn't ordered one, and even if I had the vast amount of truffle dumped on top could not distract from what was a rather ordinary, underseasoned bowl of food, containing strange cubes of pickled something-or-other (apple?) that just made the whole thing taste even more bizarre.

There were occasional glimpses of Kerridge's more celebrated work. Mussels Marinière with Warm Stout was a thick seafood mousse with a lovely deep malty stout flavour, studded with mussels and served with a warm bun similar to soda bread. Putting aside the obvious criticism that this was £11.50 for about three spoonfuls of food, it was declared "really good" and was about the only thing we'd order again if we were to return. Though that's a big "if".

Elsewhere, things continued to disappoint. In no universe I can think of can a single quail stuffed with black pudding cost £17.50, especially not one with dry breast meat, chewy skin (had it been standing around the pass too long?) and containing an unadvertised and unwelcome surprise of a mushy apricot I think it was in the centre, which oozed out as I cut into it like a lanced boil.

Chips were fine. I never really like the chunky wedge shape for my chips (Kerridge's Hand & Flowers in Marlow do dainty little tube-shaped chips, but has decided not to do that here for some reason) and the potato didn't have a great deal of flavour but they were, you know, OK. Plenty of them though (as you'd hope for £5.50), and just as well as even I with my pretty meagre appetite was beginning to panic that a single quail and some weird veg stew wasn't going to keep me going until dinnertime.

"Profiterole" disappointed in a similar way to the "cassoulet", insofar as they weren't really profiterole because they weren't made with choux pastry. Instead, some little pastry casings - brittle and savoury like crackers - were filled with sour vanilla cream and topped with an admittedly lovely caramel-chocolate sauce. They weren't horrible, just a bit like everything else - not quite as advertised, slightly underflavoured, and slightly mean-spirited for the price (£8.50).

It all added up (and thanks to a few glasses of wine it certainly bloody did add up, to around £60/head with service charge) to a very strange experience indeed. If ever world class service was needed to rescue a birthday lunch from the jaws of a mediocre menu it was now, and fortunately a familiar face I recognised from the launch team at Fera, Mayfair back in the day was on hand to ensure everything ran smoothly and our every whim was catered for in good time. Take a bow, that man. But otherwise, a pub that isn't a pub serving overthought and underpowered bistro food in a room that would be plush if it didn't have more 4K capability than the nearest branch of Dixons, does Manchester really need this? Does anywhere?

I guess it could have been worse. The big name chef originally slated to take over the space was Michael O'Hare, and lord knows how his sci-fi experimental Spanish/Japanese alien food would have coped with the expectations of an all-day bistro and the requirement to serve breakfast. Or maybe it would have been brilliant, I guess we'll never know. All I do know is that the Bull & Bear is not the vehicle for Kerridge's undoubted talents it could have been, and I honestly wonder how long his name will stay above the door. For now, put it to the back of your mind - go to Mana, or Sugo Pasta Kitchen, or Kala - and leave alone until they've decided what on earth they want to be. Life's too short for meat-free cassoulet.

5/10

Kala, Manchester

I made a promise, shortly after a visit to Burnt Truffle on the Wirral back in 2016, that even if every other one of Gary Usher's restaurants ended up being identically good, that even if I couldn't uncover a single original observation or unique thought about anywhere else he ended up opening, I'd still make an effort to write them up as what these restaurants collectively represent is too precious to go unrewarded and too important to risk the loss of momentum from lack of coverage. It's a public duty, telling people to eat at Sticky Walnut, and Burnt Truffle, and Hispi, and Pinion, and Kala, because I remember what eating out in small towns in the North West was like before people starting giving a shit (or at least, anyone with any idea on how to improve things started giving a shit), and changing it took not just skill and passion but genuine, brass-plated bravery.

Unfortunately, I broke that promise a few months later when I visited Hispi in Didsbury and didn't write about it, but in my defence there were a couple of mitigating factors. Firstly, it was very dark in there and all of my photos of the food ended up looking like something returned in the sample tray of a deep-sea biological factfinding mission, and it seemed unfair to put them on permanent record. Secondly, it was the end of a long day and I was a bit drunk, and though I'm absolutely convinced all the food was great and the service sparkling, as it absolutely usually is in those places, I'd perhaps struggle to explain in detail exactly why. There was a custard tart, though. I remember that.

Anyway, Kala. The Sticky group's most ambitious (and largest) site so far, right slap bang in the middle of Manchester's King Street, comes with its own set of expectations and potential pitfalls. Whereas the original Sticky, and Truffle, and to an extent Hispi, were self-consciously unpolished, homely and local, Kala is aiming at being a flashy city centre bistro, with its snazzy split-level downstairs bar and upstairs restaurant, open kitchen and cloakroom (whatever next!) and I get the very strong impression that while the heart and soul of the food produced is still as generous and life-affirming as ever, I feel like the presentation of certain dishes have been, shall we say, upgraded slightly for the Instagram generation.

Take their beef tartare, for example. Isn't it beautiful? Beef and croutons neatly arranged like a cubist sculpture, dotted with a judicious number of blobs of mayonnaise and topped with miniature oyster leaves, it's the kind of exact and tasteful presentation more in common with Farringdon than Fallowfield, and tasted every bit as good as it looked. I'm not saying the visual flourishes of Kala are in any way cynical, just that it feels like in order to fill this dramatic space, the food has to work that little bit harder. And work it does.

Burrata with glazed carrots and puffed rice was actually a lot more refined than my clumsy photo makes it look - a fresh, fluffy dairy element combined with a good amount of crunchy texture, and the glossy, sweet carrots underneath provided a nice filling base. It's notable that though the Sticky group has its signature dishes - featherblade with parmesan chips is a familiar favourite - the head chefs at each location are given plenty of room for their own ideas on each menu.

Duck breast, neatly fanned around a deep, dark sauce of mysterious intensity (though let's face it, probably involving duck stock) was another impressive bit of presentation. Perhaps I'd have liked the duck a little bit more pink but this is one of those moments when I have to remember that Kala's business model survives by cooking for the normal people of Manchester, not pretentious bloggers like me. Anyway I still loved this dish - the sauce was fantastic, and the little blobs of lovage cream added a lovely vegetal/metallic note.

There was also a salmon fillet with mussel cream, although I was clearly so preoccupied with my duck I completely forgot to take a photo of it. I didn't remember to try it, either. But I'm sure it was nice.

It's to my lasting regret we didn't have room for desserts - having followed Kala's Instagram account with interest I think I would have gone for the banoffee choux bun, which looks great - but maybe next time. Even without testing the skills of the pastry section we'd come away seriously impressed with the place, from the well-drilled service (especially impressive considering it's only been open a few months) to the precise, mature cooking and everything inbetween. Kala is a proper, grown-up restaurant and Manchester is very lucky to have it.

But it's worth repeating - none of this is easy. Sometimes the Sticky group make it look like running a fantastic neighbourhood bistro is the most straightforward and obvious thing in the world, but decades of miserable experiences and the continued existence of thousands of miserable neighbourhood bistros is evidence that, actually, finding just one place worthy of your dinner money on the average British high street, never mind five, is a rare thing indeed. So look, make sure you make the most of them. They're one of the few defences we have against Prezzo, Zizzi, Nandos and Pizza Express swallowing up all before them, they come highly recommended, and I guarantee you'll have a great time. Here's to many, many more.

8/10

Sugo Pasta Kitchen, Manchester

Sugo Pasta Kitchen is one of those places automatically recommended when you mention you're going to Manchester, along with drinks at 20 Stories and a trip to the art gallery. In a relatively short time (I believe the Altrincham branch opened in 2016, and the Ancoats in 2018) they have become two of the city's favourite restaurants, punters attracted by their short, authentic menus of imported Italian ingredients, friendly service, and (perhaps most importantly) the fact that, well, the options for top-quality pasta in Manchester aren't exactly extensive.

Often when restaurants like this are hyped up to too much of an extent, the reality is forced to play catch-up, but I'm delighted to be able to report that Sugo does indeed serve world-class pasta, equally the match of anything available in the rest of the country and, for that matter, a good deal better than anything I found on a recent trip to Italy. Look, maybe I was unlucky, but it's not like I didn't try, and one half-decent plate of ravioli in an entire week-long trip to Como is not enough to get me singing the praises of the state of Italian cuisine in 2019.

Anyway, back to Manchester. With the understanding that not every blog post needs to be a 1000-word treatise on the state of the planet and UK restaurant culture in general (in fact, not any blog post needs to be like that), here are the three dishes we ordered at Sugo, and why they were worth every bit and more of the money asked for them:

Firstly, cavatelli loaded with an extraordinarily generous amount of mussels, squid and huge king prawns, in a gorgeous aromatic broth of ginger and chilli. Exquisitely balanced and perfectly seasoned, boasting excellent fresh, bouncy seafood, this was a genuinely great bowl of pasta.

And so was this, strozzapreti with crab, also containing a commendable amount of the main ingredient, enough white meat for sweetness and light and a good amount of dark to bind it all earthily together. With a punch of chilli and slices of cooling fennel, it was another expertly measured and executed dish.

Finally, my own strozzapreti involved a sauce made with anchovy butter and chicken stock, and so therefore was the best of the three (although I would say that). The flavour, as you might expect from such ingredients, was incredible - deeply rich and umami-led, with pinpoint seasoning and the same hearty, healthy texture to the pasta as in the other dishes. But there just seemed that extra sprinkling of magic dust on this one, an extra complexity in the sauce and punch from the chilli. It was about as good a plate of pasta as I've ever had anywhere, and though I don't pretend to be an expert on such things, well, I can tell you over the years I've eaten a lot of pasta.

Is Sugo perfect? Well not quite, but only because I hate communal tables with an absolute passion (there are none for fewer than 6 people sharing) and I'm afraid I'm duty-bound to dock them a point for that. But add in an incredibly reasonable drinks list, attentive service and a room that's bright and friendly despite the antisocial (or should that be overly-social?) seating arrangements and it's no wonder the place is such a hit. Apologies for the lack of scene-setting photos (they didn't come out), and for not having more than a few paragraphs to say about this brilliant little restaurant. But just like the menu at Sugo, sometimes less is more.

9/10

Mana, Manchester

I try to avoid reading other reviews or first impressions of restaurants before making my own visit. Unfortunately, thanks to the proliferation of social media (and my own distressing addiction to it), seeing the odd Instagram dish or catching a significant quote from a tweeted review is inevitable, and probably does have a bit of an impact on my eventual reaction to a place. But I try, at least, to go in cold, and any similarities between the opinions - living or dead - stated on this blog and any you may have seen in the national press in the weeks or months beforehand are largely coincidental.

Now, Mana is barely two weeks* old and has had no significant press (to my knowledge) of any kind so I would have come to it knowing little more than the basics - that it's a venture in the swishly renovated Ancoats district headed by an ex-Noma chef - were it not for someone on my timeline linking to a Instagram account snarkily pointing out that some of the dishes snapped in the Mana kitchens during the tentative first few days of friends and family testing bore more than a passing resemblance to those served at Noma.

The tone of the Instagram account (I can't link to it now, it appears to have been deleted) annoyed me; it should be of no surprise to anyone that a chef that trained at Noma - whatever you think of it, unquestionably one of the most influential restaurants in the entire world - would want to use some of the things he'd learned there to launch his first solo venture. But even if Simon Martin came to Manchester with the sole intention of creating an exact clone of Noma on the cobbled streets of Ancoats, so bloody what? Wouldn't that still be an astonishing achievement? Wouldn't people still want to try strictly seasonal, foraged and technically impressive New Nordic cuisine for half the price it's on offer for in Copenhagen? Wouldn't that still be something Manchester could be exceedingly proud of?

I mention Noma, then, because it is, after all, the woolly mammoth in the room and yes, some of the dishes owe a clear debt of technique and terroir to our Danish friends. But here's the thing. I admired Noma more than I loved it. At its best it was technically stunning but a lot of the dishes just left me cold. And I honestly believe, without a shred of a doubt, that Mana is a better restaurant.

OK, I admit that's quite a claim. You're going to take a bit of convincing. So let's begin at the beginning, with a lovely stoneware mug containing a dark mushroom broth "to warm us up after the journey", which was very thoughtful of them as it was freezing rain outside. It was rich and comforting, easily enjoyable enough on its own but a little bouquet garni of herbs added extra heady notes of thyme. I've been writing about restaurants long enough to know that it's the simplest-looking things that often are the hardest to get right, so I'm sure this took quite a bit of skill.

"Winter branch" was a flute of some kind of cracker, filled with a gentle horseradish cream and topped with thyme pesto. It dissolved gracefully in the mouth, releasing a pitch-perfect balance of dairy and heat, and just look at the lovely presentation, nestled in amongst dead twigs and leaves like a winter forest floor.

This bit of puffed rind came loaded with a smooth liver paste and a blob of some kind of plum chutney. On top, neat discs of cep mushroom dusted with (I assume also cep) mushroom powder. It was intelligently constructed and using some clever techniques - the liver paté itself was supremely smooth - and notably one of only two courses out of 14 that involved meat of any kind (which are easily substituted if required). Mana is a good place to take your pescatarian friends.

If the snacks so far had been an impressive warm-up, the arrival of the langoustine marked the first of a run of courses that in terms of quality and consistency I don't think I've known better since a trip to l'Enclume in 2012. Huge scampi tails, licked with woodsmoke, were presented on skewers made from spruce twigs and coated in nasturtium leaves glued on with cured egg yolk. Spruce and egg yolk is, it turns out, a marvellous foil for seafood, but the real stars here were the langoustine themselves - plump and unbelievably sweet, not undercooked but somehow so soft they practically melted in the mouth. I've never had langoustine this good before, anywhere.

Then another dish which almost defied explanation it was that good. Cornish rock oysters were matched with a bit of chicken skin, and all wrapped up in cabbage. It sounds like a strange thing to do on paper, and yet the moment the little package exploded on the tongue it was, well as I say describing it accurately is tricky but it was cool and refreshing like the best oysters are but also distinctly savoury, like God's own surf and turf. Much of the success at Mana revolves around an exquisite sense of balance - not too much of one thing or another, the flavours distinct but complimentary, and the better for being together.

Smoked eel yakitori was the next expression of utter joy. Arriving searing away fiercely on imported Japanese coal before being placed on a folded napkin, the blueberry glaze just accentuated the naturally sweet flavour of eel without being distracting, and conspired to be (sorry here's that word again) the best eel I can remember eating in a good while. Sometimes high-end restaurants end up so obsessed with consistency, with being "just right" every time they run the risk of forgetting that the best food has the confidence and personality to be a bit charred, a bit different. Serving eel on red-hot coals is a risk, but protected with that layer of blueberry glaze the flesh of the fish kept moist and bouncy while the blackened char added- well, for want of a better word, soul.

The sauce that the shrimp tartare bathed in turned to Mexico for its flavour profile. Chapulines (that's grasshoppers to me and you) and arbol chillies created a kind of smoky, earthy vinaigrette that was so completely addictive I'm pretty sure all four of our table ended up not only drinking it from the bowl but sweeping up any last remnants of it with our fingers. Importantly - and impressively - though, the flavour of the prawns still shone through, vibrant little things at their absolute peak freshness.

Peeled walnuts were something I recognised from Noma, except there they were served with a strange bland lump of sea urchin which wasn't very pleasant, and here they made far more sense alongside a serving of dense, nutty milk curds and topped with a fermented mushroom and apple marigold oil. As a metaphor for the restaurant itself - taking advice from Noma and yet somehow using those techniques to even more impressive effect - it was worthy of a wry smile; as a dish, it was yet another reason to gasp and coo.

Mana aren't - yet - offering a completely vegan tasting menu, although I believe it's only a matter of time once they settle into things, and based on this dish I'm confident it would be the best plant-based dinner in the country. Charred onions, themselves sweet and prettily arranged, were surrounded by a sauce made from fermented barley and kelp, hitting all the pleasure points of sweet and sharp, earthy and buttery in one go. Oh, and apologies if it turns out this dish isn't vegan - I'm only guessing it is - but I bet at the very least it could be.

In much the same way as the langoustine astonished with its marrying of seafood and pine, a slice of smoky celeriac draped over a stupidly generous mound of Devonshire crab was a match made in Nordic heaven. But a stroke of genius was to add to this a broth made of masa - corn - with the accompanying unique and distinctive "soily" (for want of a better word) aromas, turning the whole thing into a kind of liquid crab taco.

From here, it's probably fair to say that Mana pulled back slightly from the very limits of perfection, but even when playing slightly safer there was still a whole lot to love. I spotted a familiar technique in the next dish of winter veg painted with "scallop fudge", and in all fairness to Noma, I loved the match of the sweet, sticky seafood and crunchy greens just as much back in Copenhagen as I did here. So what I'm saying is that the most familiar and least revolutionary (though still wonderful, obviously) dish at Mana is at least as good as one of my favourite dishes at The Best Restaurant In The World. That's what I'm saying.

Bread arrived next, a sourdough so good, with its delicate crust and warm, sticky crumb that it quite rightly deserved a course to itself. The butter - with an almost sugary richness - was apparently made by a single woman in Norway, using milk from her own small herd of cattle. It was a pretty much unbeatable match, although if I may just interject the one qualifying note in this entire review, it wasn't quite as good as the bread served down the road at Where The Light Gets In. Still, coming runner-up to them is hardly much of a criticism.

The final savoury course was a huge, bright-white chunk of poached cod, soft and yielding but retaining nice defined flakes, topped with a couple of leaves of salty sea aster. With this, "baked artichoke and oxalis" masquerading cleverly as parsley sauce, and as everyone knows, there's no better way of serving cod than with parsley sauce.

Pre-dessert was a silky sheep's milk frozen yoghurt topped a shocking green pile of sorrel "kombucha", a concoction so mouth-puckeringly sharp it was less a palate cleanser than a palate chemical peel. But in a good way - the vinegar hit carried with it a huge amount of earthy vegetal flavour, which sat very well with the yoghurt.

Finally, reindeer moss from Skye - yes actual moss - which had been treated to some clever technique rendering it as delicate as shredded wheat, blasted with chocolate flavour. The sadness of the reality of the last course was tempered with the joy of eating this strange creation, role-playing as a woodland creature on a dark highlands night.

So, there. I've made my case. Have I convinced you? I'll be the first to admit that I didn't get as much out of Noma as others have, and perhaps what Mana are doing - demystifying and making the most bewildering excesses of the Copenhagen gastro-temple more accessible and enjoyable - was always more likely to win the heart and mind of this particular reverse snob than the unfiltered, uncompromising original. But if I didn't "get" Noma than I certainly can't be the only one, and it was clear from the very first bowl of mushroom soup that Mana are in the business of ensuring their customers are flattered with heavenly textures and strong, lovingly considered flavours, rather than showing off the most obscure way of serving pickled weeds then sitting back for a round of applause.

OK, perhaps that's unfair on Noma. They are, after all, a good chunk of the reason Mana exists at all, and that Mana exists at all is a reason for profound celebration. This cathedral-like space, populated by enthusiastic young men and women right at the top of their game, is serving some of the best food I've had the pleasure of eating in my life, and it's barely two weeks old* - as time goes on, and their confidence grows I'm sure the more obviously Scandi-influenced dishes will make way for others even more wonderful, closer to the generous, soul-affirming propensities of the Mancunian kitchen team.

And you can bet I'll be back to try it when they do. Just like at Roski in Liverpool, or Where The Light Gets In in Stockport, and yes up at Moor Hall near Ormskirk, it seems like being based in the North of England is not only not the disadvantage it once was for making a living from fine dining, but a significant and lasting advantage. The combination of no-nonsense Northern generosity of spirit matched with world-class techniques forged in the wood fires of Scandinavia has created something uniquely of its time and place, and utterly magical, and after so many years of false starts and Michelin snubs, it seems Manchester has, for the second time in two years, found itself host to one of the best restaurants in the world. Book now - these guys are going places.

10/10

*Mana is in fact two months old, not two weeks. Still a bloody impressive show.