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