Mana, Manchester: ‘Yakitori eel, wood ants and spruce cutlery’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent

Each dish on the ambitious tasting menu from ex-Noma chef Simon Martin is a small art project

Manchester, despite being one of my favourite stop-off points for dining, does not have any Michelin stars. This is ludicrous. Yes, any badges, banners and gongs that attempt to define whose is the most delicious destination are a little daft – and who cares anyway? – but Manchester, for me at least, feels like a city where so many restaurants are reaching for greatness. Adam Reid at The French is a world-class talent, and I’ve much enthusiasm for the work of Aiden Byrne, now at Restaurant MCR, once of 20 Stories; not even hiding the much-adored Where The Light Gets In over in Stockport fooled inspectors into handing it a star.

Yet, despite this continued north-west snubbing, at the end of last year, an ex-Noma chef, Simon Martin, opened an ambitious project called Mana. Think 16 courses, and potentially more, but put aside three hours and £105 a head. Add to that spruce branches as cutlery, flower petals strewn about the place willy-nilly, natural wine flights, foraged stuff, ants, beeswax, picklings, dehydrated scallops, artichoke ice-cream, and cep broth in a cup as an amuse-bouche.

Are you still there? Cling on, there’s more. Behold the £300k open kitchen made of compressed stone Dekton at £590 a square metre, the handsome types wearing muted-shade aprons, the pared-back font and Scandi menu design. Oh, and the fact it’s open for dinner only (except on Saturdays), and on just four nights a week at that. Mana is the sort of place that, at the moment, is really only being opened in remoter areas of Somerset, Cornwall and the Lakes, and which involve a 24-hour round trip that somehow lands you with a £300 hotel room bill. (Last week, I was quoted £420 for a 3pm-11am stay in a “cosy” room in Somerset without dinner.) Martin, however, has put Mana on Blossom Street in Ancoats, just north-east of Manchester City centre. I had to love this energy.

I should say right now that Mana is influenced by Noma. Martin went there as an intern in 2016 and his tutorship by René Redzepi is clearly present in a million tiny ways. The name doesn’t exactly throw guests off the scent, either. However, Mana loves Noma like Oasis loved The Beatles. Positively, jubilantly, and creating their own buzz in the process. This, as compared with the way in which Glaswegian cover band No-Way-Sis loved Oasis, by honking their way through Supersonic and hoping people were too pissed to notice.

To test this out, I took one of Noma’s biggest fans to Mana, and besides some initial quacking about copyright throughout the first 10 minutes, he loved it right through from the opening bars of venison salami with cauliflower fungus to, three hours later, the closing notes of baby pine cone festooned with small, bitter wood ants. Yes, ants. I’m still not sold on this ant malarkey. If they’re all that’s left after global warming, kill me and eat me, too.

Each dish at Mana, as one might imagine, is a small, fancifully presented art project. “English tostada with all the flowers of spring” is a play on a tortilla, loaded with petals clinging to its cheesy innards. It’s a “Will this choke me?” sort of mouthful that turns out for the best. A small hedgerow of spruce is delivered to the table with chargrilled langoustine attached to spikes and enlivened with cured egg yolk. Oysters are served dramatically, cooked in chicken fat, wrapped in cabbage, shoved back in their shells and served on dry ice, which appealed to the goth in me. Yakitori eel glazed with yeast and deep, red blackcurrant vinegar is a certain star of the show: it is so incredibly funky. Not in an Earth, Wind & Fire way, but more in a Vincent Price on Jacko’s Thriller “The Funk of 40,000 years” way. A funk that curls your toes with its all-powerful, umami thrust.

The natural wine pairing jollies along, as per usual, and comes lovingly described by the clever, friendly sommelier, but it is challenging to drink in parts. “Why can they not just serve normal wine?” asks Charles after the fifth glass, which he claims tastes like bunions. Mind you, he’s one of those people who thinks wine should be “delicious” and “made under strict rules”, and “not taste like apple cider vinegar or actual urine”. Free your mind, Charles.

I needed all the wine to help block out the tail of “retired dairy cow” we were then invited to eat with rhubarb and oxalis, and which came with a backstory involving pastures and time resting. I do not entertain such stories. They feel like being taken to see Watership Down as a child, and thinking it’s going to be a pleasant story about bunnies. On much safer ground were two wondrous dishes of gaspingly fresh English peas with caviar and plum and, my very favourite, a bowl of sweet, velvety charred onion petals with fermented barley and kelp.

Revealing these dishes feels like standing in the foyer at Vue shouting out spoilers. But there is artichoke ice-cream for pudding. Mana is the sound of Manchester turning a corner. I hope the men with the stars agree.

Food 9/10
Service
9/10
Atmosphere
7/10

Mana 42 Blossom Street, Manchester M4, 0161-392 7294. Open Weds-Fri, dinner only, 6pm-late; Sat, lunch noon-4pm, dinner 6.30pm-late. Set menus only, dinner £105 a head, plus £75 matching wine flight; Sat lunch £50, plus £45 wine flight, all plus service.

• This article was amended on 2 August 2019 to correct an editing error which said that Where The Light Gets In has a Michelin star

Contributor

Grace Dent

The GuardianTramp

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