Ten @ The Violet Lounge - West Didsbury, Manchester

Seasonality and locality are BIG THINGS right now; we're encouraged from many sides to pop down to the local  greengrocer and forego air-freighted beans wrapped in 72 layers of polythene and I think that's all good (just don't ask me about my tomatoes...).

Sensing a trend, many restaurants have jumped on the seasonal/local bandwagon and started touting how local and in season their veg is, despite whacking on a side of asparagus in December and counting local as sourcing their produce from Smithfields and not checking where the actual stuff itself is from (I'm not going to name you, you know who you are).

Ok I'm badmouthing, there are true stalwarts such as Gabriel's Kitchen/Whitworth Gallery Cafe, et al getting it right, there's just a lot of hot air and foreign raspberries on menus these days.

Another place getting it right is The Violet Hour; an opulent drinking den located on West Didsbury's trendy Burton Road, who have just started serving food - to kick off all their food based offerings and going so far as to positively celebrate seasonality, they have started Ten, their pop-up menu.

The menu - a seasonal celebration and super scrummy

Ten is the concept of owner Dan Pollard and chef Phil Cook (oh what a wonderfully apt name!); the menu takes inspiration from the ten best seasonal ingredients and from this they create an innovative exploration through the tastes of the season. Oh and for a twist, they pair the menu with cocktails - because that's what they do so well at The Violet Hour.

After a quick relax in The Violet Hour's comfortable and muted surroundings, we were ushered upstairs to an explanation of the menu and our first course - a native oyster with vodka granita and blood orange pebble; cue much discussion as to how that pebble was made - looked like the forgotten grey sponge in a student's bathroom, but tasted divine - like a chewy, sweetly perfumed, citrus foam. The oyster was spanking fresh - I'm going to be picky and say why waste a native with a vodka granita (no matter how delish) and they could have got away with a plain  old rock oyster - but that wasn't the aim of the menu, which was an incredibly opulent celebration of the amazing produce we get in the UK at this time of the year (ok, blood oranges are from the Med, but they're in season at the mo, so don't go leaving me arsey comments).

Next a pretty, rustic tart topped with lashings of Burt's Blue, cauliflower and edible flowers - pungent, salty and superb - but it was the accompanying cider broth that we rated most; deeply savoury with a hint of sharpness that matched brilliantly with the cheese. This course was paired with the Cuban Beekeeper (white rum, honey, lime, grape, apple, black pepper) - a honey based cocktail that softened out the sharpness in the cheese and the broth, but which was a little too sweet for me (please remember that I'm a booze and ice kind of girl, so many cocktails are super sweet in my opinion).

Cuban Beekeeper - with cute cocktail cards to remind you of your drink

The fish course was the best of the evening - a sliver of salmon cooked sous vide to 40 degrees was firm yet wobbly and jelly-like, I loved the yielding texture. This was sat atop salsify and the most savoury chicken broth in the world; the rich, deep, satisfying flavours a true testament to the skill in the kitchen.

Best dish of the night - 40c salmon

Closing the savoury courses was a just cooked dish of venison and celeriac - unfortunately ours had been left on the pass for slightly too long and was pretty cold by the time it reached it, however this didn't take away from the obvious quality of both the cooking and meat. Could have done with a bigger portion and some carbs! To pair with the venison, we were served a Thyme is of the Essence (gin, peche liqueur, lemon, thyme) - a fluffy, perfumed thyme infused cloud of herby sweet sharpness accenting the wild nature of the meat, which was the best of all the drinks in my opinion.

Cue a long wait for pudding, a little too long, in which we were served the matching cocktail - a Deerstalker Old Fashioned (bourbon, chocolate, sage, blood orange). Now, here's where I'm going to have a little moan.... I love an Old Fashioned, it's one of my very favourite cocktails and one that I've actually learnt to make at home. I even make a cake in homage to this drink. As many of my friends will tell you, I'll wax lyrical about it and bore the balls off you - so in my eyes no one should fuck with this cocktail. A Deerstalker contains chocolate and it was awful - that's my opinion, everyone else in the room raved about this drink, but I found it a travesty of a mighty cocktail.

So after that rant, the pudding was a very rich chocolate ganache (beautiful) and a pineapple upside down cake with spiced rum - loved it, but again, needed it to be bigger as my tummy was still rumbling after five courses.

Pudding - that ganache is out of this world - I need the recipe!

Ten is a wonderful concept, bringing together top quality ingredients with exceptional cooking skills and a good deal of creative flair. There's the small issue of needing to work on their timings and maybe throwing in some carbs or sides of veg for gluttons like me, but they're just little things and you know I like to be picky/have something to moan about.

Just a shame it's only once every two months, the next one's already in the diary!

Ps The Violet Hour are also rolling out a weekly food menu - it's gourmet bar snacks and Pieminister pies in the week and then Sunday club - roasts and Bloody Mary's on a Sunday. And of course, they'll be serving their very well made cocktails as per usual. Get down there and get your belly filled!

Cost for five courses and three cocktails - £35pp

Food - 8/10 (one off for being a bit cold)
Service - 8/10
Atmosphere - 8/10
Value for money -  9/10 (really, five AMAZING courses AND booze for £35, it's a steal!)

Total - 33/40

The Violet Hour - Burton Road, West Didsbury, Manchester - Twitter - Facebook - dan@theviolethourdidsbury.co.uk - 0161 434 9521


Please note, I was given my place at Ten for free as Dan knows how much I like to eat - as you know I don't say nice things unless I actually want to and from my nit-picking above you know I'm telling the truth about EVERYTHING.

Fire and Salt BBQ @ The Gaslamp - Manchester

Do you ever have that thing where you find somewhere you really like, think it's brilliant and then never go because there's one major flaw?

The Gas Lamp, I like to go here - photo with thanks to Drinking Aloud

It's like this at the Gas Lamp - one of the few pubs in Manchester that I like to go and hang out. Mainly because there's a great selection of beers and spirits, a bit because the staff are very knowledgeable, quite a lot because you don't get too many knob heads/beer nerds looking down on you there and 75% because there are sexy men who drink there. I like sexy men. With beards. And glasses. Foreign accents are a plus...

Here's lots of people and some sexy men in the Gas Lamp - with thanks again to Drinking Aloud

So how come I don't drink there too often? It's because I think with my damn stomach ALL THE TIME. The Gas Lamp has an amazing array of drinks, but the local eating choices are:

a) Mark Addy - would be great if it didn't stink of toilets and they didn't fuck up my food EVERY time I go there.

b) Australaisa - Really? People think the food is good? And they want to pay that much for it?

c) Oast House - too full of suits trying to have a dress down Friday on a Tuesday. And I have to share tables with other people. Other people are a drawback.

D) Neighbourhood - expensive and I wasn't impressed (bitchy blog post coming soon).

Luckily, those chaps at the Gas Lamp have gone some way to rectify this serious matter and to appease my ever hungry belly. From now till sometime in the future, the Gas Lamp will be playing host to the magnificent Fire and Salt BBQ.

If you have missed the phenomenon that is the wonderfully juicy, tasty, life changing food from Fire and Salt, then you have obviously been dead or living under a stone, so let me explain:

Fire and Salt set up their company in order to bring the taste of the American South (as in rednecks, not Mexicalis) to Manchester. Firstly they ate a lot of sub-standard BBQ in the UK. Then they went to the roots of BBQ and journeyed round some overly conservative areas of the USA, eating much better BBQ, but keeping any liberal views they may hold firmly under their hats. Then they came home and built a bloody big smoke pit in their garden. Out of bricks. With their hands. Now they smoke whole pigs in their backyard (whole pigs! For hours! They don't sleep! And there's basting to be done!), then they feed said pigs (and other meats) to lucky, lucky people.

Brisket from Fire and Salt BBQ - I didn't take pictures as I was wolfing food, so here's one I stole

I popped along to the Gas Lamp last week to see what they had going - and boy, I wasn't disappointed. Paying a tenner at the bar, I sat back with a good quality rum (it would have been whiskey, but I was in a rum mood - bah boom...) and waited for my food to come out. A plate plied high with chicken fried ribs (not chickens' ribs, they would be TINY, but ribs chucked American Triple D stylee in the deep fat fryer. And fried. Like a chicken), oozy mac and cheese and some spicy okra corn tomato concoction that probably has a proper name, but I was concentrating on the food and not the names at that point.

Ribs - I could have eaten twice as many. Mac - the best in Manchester I'd say, as you could actually taste the cheese and the mac wasn't flabby; it all oozed properly in only the way a mac chock full of cheese can. It was nearly as good as mine. And that's saying something because mine is probably the best in the world. Actually, rephrase, it is the best in the world.

So bar coming round to my house, because you're not invited, go to the Gas Lamp and ingest the best food you will probably have all year, instead of some tasteless, churned out shite from around the corner.

Fire and Salt BBQ will be there from 6pm on Thursdays and it'll only cost you a tenner. Get there quick before all the food sells out.

The Gas Lamp, 50 Bridge Street, Manchester M3 3BW - Gas Lamp Twitter - Fire and Salt Twitter

Dirty Dogs are Hot - Port Street Beer House, Manchester

Who doesn't like a gob full of sausage? I'm one who can't complain when offered a mouthful of meat, so when I heard a pair of plucky food lovers were bringing their take on American style hotdogs to one of my favourite beer haunts I just had to go and see what all the fuss was about.

Dirty Dogs have a passion for good hotdogs; seeing that no one else was selling them in Manchester and feeling some love for the whole 'street food/pop up' scene, they've decided to give it a go. They also got a mission - feeling that hotdogs in this country give this American institution a bad name, they're determined to save us from a surfeit of substandard sausages.

Me and the poster lady; total sausage lovin'

Set up in the back yard of Port Street Beer House, the smell of cooking hotdogs and sweet, sizzling onions hung heavy in the air. We got there pretty early having been tipped off that there was a limited number available - good thing, the queue was already out the door.

Sausage fest

Opting for the night's special, The Port Street; a Barbakan bun was loaded up with sweet onions, a massive smoked Polish sausage, topped with IPA soaked sauerkraut and all cut thorough with lashings of dijon. The sausage was enormous and I had trouble fitting it in to my eagerly awaiting lips (yeah, I just had to get some smut it) - the flavours all worked supremely well - smokey sweetness cut through by the tangy sauerkraut and all pepped up with generous amounts dijon.

Smoked polish sausage with IPA soaked sauerkraut

We also tried the Dirty South - pork frank on red cabbage slaw all smothered in pulled pork and BBQ sauce; yup, that's pork on pork baby. The frank for this dog was smaller than the smoked sausage, but had a good bite, a sweet/salty taste and was not too fatty, which was a major plus. The pulled pork was a tad dry, but these guys were cooking on hot plate in beer garden - and this was 100% better than anything I've had in a similar setting.

Pork on pork loving with the Dirty South

The dogs ran out quickly, the topping quicker; fellow blogger Mangechester was left with a pork frank with an extremely arty lattice of ketchup and mustard. Nice, but certainly no cigar.

Dirty Dogs have started small; they're concentrating on getting the recipes just right, securing spot on suppliers and making sure they can please the crowds - they're well on their way to doing just that. There's a few things they need to pull up on; they're quite slow on the hot plate, they need to work out how many toppings they bring and that pulled pork needs work. But for a fiver, you get a big, tasty mouthful and I haven't had a better bit of sausage than this in my mouth round the back of a pub before.

There's the whole argument that this just jumps on the current trend for American fast food, tarted up and served street side - yeah maybe, but this being Manchester we don't have that much street food as we're ten steps/years behind London. Doesn't matter if it's on trend at the moment; Dirty Dogs' hotdogs taste good and I don't care if it's so now, so last week, or if it was never in anyway - the food tasted good and that's all I care about.

Where can you catch them? Check out their Twitter feed and hopefully you'll be able to take part in some hot sausage action; I know I'm certainly gagging for more.

Almost Famous Burgers - Secret Location, Northern Quarter, Manchester

There's a lot for me not to like about Almost Famous Burgers - the fact that there's no reservations (I'm lazy and hate queues), you have to be on Twitter to know where it is, they have a statement saying no bloggers , they don't let you take photos (not like this is all a clever marketing ploy or something...), and the word 'nom' is on the menu. It's actually in the title of one of the burgers. I don't like the word nom. End of.

But the lure of good quality burgers was too much for me; so despite my initial reservations and the large list of 'why I would probably hate its,' I found myself outside a nondescript door in Manchester's Northern Quarter early one Saturday evening. Pushing through the door like delinquent children at a derelict factory's gates, we found ourselves walking up some stairs through offices, all the way up to a door with 'No Photos' emblazoned on it. It's not a conventional entry so don't be scared off by thinking (in their words) 'What the frick is this?!'

T'boy and I pushed the door open; a very Alice in Wonderland moment as  we tentatively peered round not knowing what to expect, our eyes taking a moment to focus and then we were greeted by a large, white rabbit in a waistcoat - sorry I mean; welcoming barmen with friendly grins, a cocktail class at the bar and various 20-somethings mooching around, choosing what to eat.

We went through to main eating area; which is white, bright and high ceilinged with wonderfully cheeky prints on the walls - not somewhere you'd expect to be serving up an all American menu; but a lovely space that made you concentrate on the food and not some kitchy route 66 decor - and what food!

Almost Famous concentrates on two main things - burgers and chicken wings. The menu's short, a selection of burgers with different toppings, three types of wings and some fries. As t'boy commented "it's a good sign, means it'll be good." And his sentiment rang true with every bite we took.

Menu - This is the only photo I took. I know, I'm lame.

Our Almost Famous burger was served almost pink (finally, somewhere doing this...); a fat juicy patty in a sweet brioche-type bun, covered in cheese, special sauce and some greenery for freshness and fun. I am going to put it out there that this might be the best burger I have ever had. It's definitely the best one I've had in Manchester.

The burgers are brilliant, exceptional and totally moreish, but it's the chicken wings I'm going to bang on about. Called 'Crack Wings,' I can now see why they have been given this title; I don't usually like chicken wings, but I had to have extra portions - I don't know what's in them sauces but I couldn't stop. The Redneck sauce is definitely the best - spicy without killing your taste buds, heavy on the BBQ, immensely yummy. I licked my fingers for the next three hours - I was at a gig, people looked at me strange, I didn't care.

Despite all my reservations around Almost Famous' clever marketing ploys, on trend Charlie Sheen style winning talk and social media faux secrecy hype; I have found somewhere with the most unpretentious of welcomes, the best burgers and wings in town and deep down I really liked pushing open that anonymous door that could have lead anywhere, the butterflies in my tummy as I walked up the stairs and the fact that I'm now in on the secret.

Price for a burger, two portions of wings, a portion of chips and a beer - £18.90

Food - 9/10
Atmosphere - 9/10
Service - 9/10
Value for money - 8/10

Total - 35/40

Go again? Frick yeah! Although I'll have to be quick as they're only going to be open for the next few weekends (they only open Fri and Sat from about 4pm - midnight, though check out their Twitter for more info).

Almost Famous Burgers, Anonymous door in the main part of the Northern Quarter, Manchester. (Like I'm going to tell you where it is - check out the website and twitter to find out more).

Ps - sorry for the lack of photos, I took one of the menu and then chickened out like the massive girl that I am.

Pps - Check out the tiles on the main staircase up, amazingly beautiful.