The Scottish Mail on Sunday - You
EATING OUT
Tom is impressed by Erst, a Manchester spot where the décor’s as cool as the dishes are hot
One is fun. There, I’ve said it, and I don’t care who knows. Because eating alone is one of life’s great pleasures: a joyously selfish, utterly self-centred escape from the ever-taxing travails of social interaction. It’s pure culinary onanism, restaurant self-love, a chance to sit back, disappear into a book and quietly observe the lives of others. No facile chit-chat, no shared dishes, no waiting around for pudding. Just me, myself and I. And a couple of decent martinis.
OK, so Friday night in Erst, one of Manchester’s most beloved restaurants, might not be the ideal solo outing. As lovers flirt and friends gossip, I sit alone in the corner of this pared-back industrial room (all concrete walls and minimalist furniture) bathed in the softest of lights, and lost in the deep Southern noir of an S A Cosby novel. But with that martini at my right hand (it’s a classic, dry as hell and gone in three icy sips) and a
Cumbrae oyster, softly briny, in a mellow fermented-chilli dressing, sitting before me, I couldn’t be happier. I love Manchester, and I love this restaurant.
It’s one of those rare places where everything comes together to create a dinner of quietly understated magic. There’s a
A grilled mutton chop is almost Dickensian in its old-fashioned heft
purity here, of technique and flavour, too. Take the flatbread. I’m not sure where this ubiquitous trend started. Probably with the Phoenicians. You can’t move these days without being assaulted by some artisan-topped, fiercely grilled dough. But here it comes soaked in beef fat, tasting like those bits at the bottom of the roasting pan after cooking the
Sunday joint: puffy, charred and bovinely brilliant.
Five Cantabrian anchovies, sweetly intense – the galácticos of cured fish – wallow in a limpid pool of golden olive oil. Onglet tartare is roughly chopped and bathed in a slick of raw yolk and bone marrow. It’s big and bold and elegantly brutal, like Oliver Reed, in a dinner jacket, mud-wrestling with the Minotaur. A beige slick of bagna cauda, smoothly pungent, is scooped up with slices of raw fennel,
endive and small chunks of romesco. And the remains of that flatbread, too. Throw in a grilled mutton chop, almost Dickensian in its old-fashioned heft – cooked pink and delicately stained with turmeric – as well as service that’s sweet and warm as Manchester pudding, and you have a restaurant that’s utterly glorious for a group. But even better for one.
About £30 per head. Erst, 9 Murray Street, Ancoats, Manchester; erst-mcr.co.uk