manchester clubbing

Hermit Comes Home

2009-06-29T17:22:00.007+01:00

You may remember some time ago I wrote about what could have been the best job in Manchester – living as a hermit in the tower of the Manchester museum. Refresh yourselves here, if you feel the need.

Well, I have news on the hermit front – he’s arrived! That’s right, it was actually true and not just a stupid idea. Well, it may still be a stupid idea but it is also true.

Our resident hermit, who, it has to be said, must be sweating his little Hermit toes off in this weather up in that tower, moved in over the weekend and he’s already been busy blogging- his only form of communication with the outside world. Highlights include a rather detailed description of the gunk he’s had to clean out of his temporary home, the museum’s loft apartment apparently not having been used much in the last century or so. “The bodies of insects, dead skin cells, droppings, mould, minerals deposited by passing traffic, city grime, dust,” are some of the delights he moved in with. Nice.

The purpose of his residency, as we briefly glossed over before, is something to do with purpose and existence and killing the planet – a nice upbeat project to give a man living on his own for a month. He’s also been tasked with questioning the purpose of the actual museum collection and, rather alarmingly, seems to be doing so by threatening to destroy most of it. I quote: “Each day over the next forty days I will choose an object from my collection and offer it up in a spirit of sacrifice. The object will be announced through a variety of media, including this blog. I will then destroy it.” Blimey. Way to protect our heritage, Mr Hermit.

The idea is that people put forward an argument to say why the objects should be saved and, if our secluded friend deems the argument worthy enough, he will save the artefact in question. Quite how he’s been given so much power is beyond me, but never mind. It’s all about questioning things, apparently. I’ve got a few questions of my own at the moment, which I shall reserve until more offerings from the hermit come forward over the next few months. Rest assured, we’ll be monitoring his progress. I’ll leave you with a photo, not of the hermit himself but of his first item up for sacrifice – a human skull.

For Better or Worse

2009-06-25T14:47:00.003+01:00

For most people one spouse is quite enough, thank you very much. Having one person getting in your way in the morning, wanting to watch different programmes on the TV and eat different things for tea is plenty. One woman in Manchester, however, is apparently quite happy with all of those little foibles as she is positively collecting husbands. Five in fact, at the last count. That’s a lot of TV arguments.

Not content was she with having married, and never divorced, four of the unlucky fellows but she recently picked up number five, a soldier, and signed the book once more. It was only on the drive up to Scotland for their honeymoon when she revealed to him that she was already married – four times – that the police were called. One wonders what the conversation went like: “Darling?” ”Yes darling.” “I’ve got something to tell you...” followed, presumably, by something beginning with ‘f’.

It’s worth noting that her vocation is listed as ‘former glamour model and adult film actress’ and also that she was jailed for the same offence (that’ll be bigamy) for six months in 2002. There is, apparently, nothing to stop this husband-collecting vixen. Apart from another jail term, presumably, which she now faces. Unless any of the male guards are particularly susceptible to her apparent charms, in which case she might just have number six in her sights.

Big Breakfast

2009-06-16T17:30:00.002+01:00

The nation’s ‘obesity crisis’ is never far from the news these days, with the waistlines of our youth and, indeed, the whole population being of grave concern to us all, apparently. After all, if the world needs saving from a collision with Mars, as also recently reported, it’s not going to be a race of fatties that’s going to do it, is it? No. No it’s not.

Such cholesterol and calorific concerns are far from the mind of an enterprising cafe owner in Bolton, however, who is some way to earning himself a record from the people at Guinness. Mario Frappola’s cafe, the inventively named Mario's Cafe Bar, in Westhoughton, offers a full English breakfast to apparently rival no other. At £10 a time customers with clean enough arteries and a strong enough desire to try and fill them as quickly as possibly can receive the following, served on a tray (no plate being big enough):

10 sausages

10 eggs

10 rashers of bacon

10 slices of toast

5 black pudding slices

Tomatoes

Mushrooms

Baked beans

And if you can eat it all within 20 minutes you get it for free. The British Heart Foundation are, unsurprisingly, concerned. “Not a good idea,” was their verdict and Mario has, by way of recognition, started making customers sign a form dissolving him of any responsibility should their circulatory system pack up after sausage number 10. No one has yet to complete the challenge yet, however, so I’m sure there will be plenty more takers. As far as we know no one has died trying yet either.

Eggs at the Ready

2009-06-10T17:01:00.002+01:00

Unless you’ve been locked in a cupboard for the last week (apologies to those who actually are locked in cupboards, but kudos for maintaining an internet connection) you will have heard the news that the BNP have managed to actually get one of their people voted into something. The circumstances are somewhat convenient, it has to be said, in that most people couldn’t be bothered to vote for anyone, in light of the recent discovery that MPs have been stealing our money, and so the few BNP supporters out there seized the opportunity of our collective lethargy and voted in not one but two of their representatives.

So BNP leader, and one of the elected individuals concerned, Nick Griffin tried to talk to some people of the press in London yesterday and got driven off the streets by a group of people with opposing views, who waved banners, chanted slogans and threw eggs at him. Strange that the humble egg has become a universal weapon in such circumstances but I suppose it is entirely built for the job, being strong enough to throw yet fragile enough to break on impact. Incidentally, is this actually egg emerging from Mr Griffin’s right ear?

I digress. The point is, he’s giving it another go tonight in Manchester, presumably in the hope that those who oppose the BNP’s policies are a bit more subdued up north. The pub they’re holding the conference in has already been mentioned on the web. I suspect he’ll be thankful if he gets just eggs.

Cigarettes and Alcohol

2009-06-04T17:20:00.003+01:00

I don’t seem to be able to leave Messrs Gallagher alone recently, this being the third time I’ll be writing about them in four posts. Difficult to ignore today though as they are set to play the first of their three concerts in Heaton Park tonight (the others being this Saturday and Sunday – they presumably have things on Friday night). Here's a picture of one of them actually in a park:

Heaton Park is, for readers unfamiliar with Google Maps, a large park to the north of the city centre right next to the M60 and there’s a lot of grumbling going on today – mainly in the MEN, it has to be said - about the hassle this is all going to cause. This little diatribe in particular has caught the imagination of many of their readers. I got about halfway through and gave up – don’t they have editors over there?

Anyway, will there be lots of traffic? Will the thousands of people cause untold disruption? Will Oasis play any decent new songs? The answer to only one of those questions is certain.

Roll With It

2009-06-02T17:03:00.004+01:00

Following my report of tenuous pub marketing a post or two ago, I thought I’d follow suit with a tenuous Manchester story of my own. It concerns a certain Mr Gallagher again, not in the locale of his native Burnage this time but in the altogether more southern environment of his new stomping ground in London, namely one of pubs around Primrose Hill. Not papped falling out of a club or punching a photographer this time, as was once the norm of his media coverage, rather an unwitting victim of the new Google Street View. That’s right, ‘Our Liam’ was one of the many thousands to be caught on camera by the closest thing we’ve seen to a real Big Brother. He was sitting outside his local at the time, enjoying a pint, when the little camera car went past. How or why someone discovered this is nearly as troubling as the fact it happened in the first place but I won’t dwell on that – here he is, captured for all to see, blurry face supplied by Google. We got a four year old to do the Photoshopping again, as you can see:

Close up:
His ‘people’, incidentally, have confirmed it is him. Quite likely, apparently, that he would be sitting outside the pub in the middle of the day drinking pints. The lucky git.

Sick as Parrots

2009-05-28T17:22:00.002+01:00

So it’s all over – the much hyped clash of the titans, the best footballers in the world, the two best teams in the world, the game the world has been waiting for – and Manchester United didn’t even turn up in the end.

Old Trafford was a buzz of activity yesterday – stalls, usually only out on match days, selling flags, t-shirts and Eric ‘God’ Cantona banners, were doing swift trade, the pubs around the ground were heaving and the Travel Lodge at the end of the road had flags and scarves flying from many of its windows.

I can’t help but be intrigued by the apparently blind devotion with which some people follow their football team. The people on the news yesterday who spent enormous amounts of time and money getting to Italy and staying near to Rome who didn’t even have a ticket and were, apparently, happy to just watch the game on a TV in a bar (which wasn’t serving beer by then). I appreciate there is a heightened sense of atmosphere in such places – Old Trafford and Rome last night - but still, it’s just a football game on a TV, isn’t it?

Anyway, if it keeps them happy then good luck to them. Needless to say the city is in a sombre mood today, the flag stalls gone and their owners no doubt cursing the lack of victory parade through the city streets. Old Trafford stands defiant but without the red-shirted devotees who were present yesterday. When I passed today, a man had taken advantage of the lack of people and was playing with his remote controlled car on a piece of waste ground out the front that would, had the trophy returned to Manchester, have been filled with burger vans, scarf sellers and beery, jubilant fans. Instead of the sound of thousands singing victory songs in unison, the air around Old Trafford today was filled with the pathetic buzz of a tiny motor; perhaps an equally fitting tribute, given the circumstances.

What's the Story?

2009-05-26T16:28:00.001+01:00

You’ve got to admire some people’s entrepreneurial spirit. In these testing financial times, with pubs and restaurants closing daily all over the country, one plucky Manchester company is bucking the trend and actually opening one up – nay, re-opening a former victim of the aforementioned financial meltdown. The Farmers Arms in Burnage is now in the hands of the apparently thriving Levenshulme Pub Company, an outfit that already owns two watering holes in, unsurprisingly, Levenshulme.

So how does one go about trying to make a success of a once-bankrupt pub? What could possibly be tried that hasn’t been tried before? Well it’s simple – find a tenuous link to the surrounding area and flog the hell out of it. Ladies and gentlemen The Farmers Arms presents the Oasis Music Lounge - a place for fans to come and listen to the music of their favourite band (because, obviously, you don’t hear it anywhere else in Manchester) in a room a bit closer to where the Gallagher brothers grew up than most other pubs in the country. Have Messrs Gallagher ever been in the Oasis Music Lounge? Well, no. What about The Farmers Arms? Probably...possibly...who knows? Who cares?

To be fair to the Levenshulme Pub Company, they do have some unique features in their new venue – some photography of the band taken at their gig in Eastlands and some undisclosed memorabilia, and despite the obvious tenuousness of this venture, I wish them well. It’s good to see people trying things out and taking a bit of a gamble instead of just moaning about why it wouldn’t work and never doing anything about it. I might even pop down myself. What are the chances of Wonderwall being on the jukebox when I walk in?

Rich Chocolate

2009-05-19T16:13:00.006+01:00

Those of you out in Manchester at the weekend, perhaps jogging your way around these soggy streets on the Great Manchester Run or waiting to see a certain Mr Bolt run like a, well, bolt, might have noticed a new addition to Deansgate’s snacking options. Just opposite the Great Northern complex a new sprig has sprung in the form of The Chocolate Cafe, the second of a chain whose flagship outlet sits in the relative tranquillity of Ramsbotton. It specialises, you won’t be surprised to learn, in chocolate-based foodstuffs.

Essentially, however, it’s a cafe – you can get toast and scones and tea and coffee, stuff like that. They also do jacket potatoes with one topping for the rather breath-intaking price of £4.95 and, even more intake-inducing, cold sandwiches for £6 a go. That’s pretty steep by anyone’s standards but the toasted sandwiches surely take the WHLN Prize for Food-Induced Hyperventilation, sitting pretty as they do at the lofty heights of £7 each.

Their gimmick is the chocolate pizza – a chocolately take on the traditional dough, tomato and cheese format, substituting the likes of ham for fudge, olives for chocolate buttons and pepperoni for those little discs covered in sugary balls – jazzies they’re called, apparently. They look a bit like this:

So that’s all very nice except when you discover that a six inch ‘pizza’ with three toppings will set you back seven quid. It’d be interesting to find out how much chocolate you actually get for your seven bucks, but interesting enough to spend £7 finding out? Possibly – I’ll let you know.

Expensive MPs

2009-05-12T17:19:00.005+01:00

MPs, Kit Kats, manure, swimming pools and housekeepers. No, not the plot for a horror film (or a porn film, Mr Smith) but just some of the things that MPs have been spending our money on over the last year or so. That’s right – OUR MONEY! Isn’t it outrageous? Well, yes, it probably is and they should be punished in some way. Maybe that horror film isn't such a bad idea.

There’s a certain irony in the level of outrage being thrown around though, especially by people who collect expenses from their own work – I bet there’s the odd Kit Kat in there too, as well as lots of other things. OK, so it’s not public money they’re spending, directly, but you’ve got to in some way feel for the public nature in which the MPs expenses are being aired and scrutinised, haven’t you? No? All right, so you haven’t. Let’s look at Salford’s finest as an example, the Right Honourable Hazel Blears:

Charges against included claiming for three different houses in one year and spending £5000 of OUR MONEY on furniture in just three months. She also claimed the mortgage payments on a flat in London, the hotel costs incurred when she sold the flat and didn’t have anywhere to stay, and didn’t pay tax on the £45,000 profit she made on the flat when she sold it. Hang on a minute – she bought a flat with OUR MONEY, sold it and pocketed all the profit? How does that work? Are these expenses some sort of investment scheme for our elected representatives to use to dally on the property market and see what profit can be made? Here’s a thought – if the flat had lost value by the time she sold it, what’s the betting she would have used expenses to pay off the deficit?

Give us back our money, Blears!

ID Manchester

2009-05-06T17:13:00.003+01:00

It seems Manchester is to become national guinea pig and be the first city to trial the Government’s latest attempt to glean money from us at every available opportunity and monitor our every move while reducing us all to mere statistics – that’s right people, ID cards are coming to town. Here's a little unofficial FAQ, in an interview style that seems to be inexplicably popular amongst apparently ‘on pulse’ publications these days, on the whole ID card issue:

What is it?

It’s a card that confirms your identification. Your name, date of birth, eye colour, height, dress sense, taste in music, sexual preferences, inside leg measurement and favourite type of sandwich. (some of those might not be true)

Do I have to have one?

Not yet but if the current group of Labour MPs who are in charge of our country decide they like them, you will.

I don’t want one.

Tough shit. If they have their way, you will have to.

Fine, I’ll get it and just chuck it in a drawer then.

Sorry, did we mention you will be charged £60 for the pleasure? That’s not optional either, by the way.

Bastards. So what’s the point in it?

Good question. Very little, say opponents and Tory/Lib Dem MPs. It will basically do what a driving licence and/or a passport does at the moment – i.e. it confirms who you are. The only big difference will be the compulsory aspect. And the fact that it’s nice and neat and fits in your wallet. A bit like a driving licence.

So what’s the point of the trial?

Supposedly to ‘see how they go down’.

But I don’t have to have one yet?

No, it’s a voluntary trial.

Are they charging for them?

Yes, £30 in the trial.

So I have to pay but it’s not compulsory?

No.

Ha ha – screw you suckers, I’m just not going to bother then!

Quite. You and the rest of Manchester, probably.

Macho, Phallic Manchester

2009-04-28T14:44:00.002+01:00

DJ and prolific scribbler on the subject of ‘Manchester’, Dave Haslam has recently done a piece for the BBC website about the ‘changing cityscape’ of Manchester. It’s only short but worth a watch – have a look:

Fairly predictable stuff, I guess – Castlefield, old vs new, post-bomb regeneration. I liked his take on the Beetham Tower though - “macho, phallic power being expressed”, apparently. I hadn’t thought about it in quite that way before, I have to admit. I think I’ll be viewing the city in a slightly different light now.

Time to Invest?

2009-04-23T17:15:00.000+01:00

News reaches us that apartments in the Media City development are going with as much as 20% off list price, with a promise that this is as low as they will get. For those ‘out of the loop’, Media City is a large development being built on ‘The City’s Iconic Waterfront’ (that’s Salford Quays) in preparation for the influx of lots of businesses – BBC, Sony, Bupa, Nike, Royal Mail – in 2010. ‘Lots of businesses’, of course, means lots of people working for them – 15,500 in fact. And what do people need? That’s right – supermarkets. Oh, and places to live, which is why an apartment in the Media City development is such a good investment.

Do I sound like and estate agent? I’m sorry about that. It is true though and if this 20% business is to be believed then it might not be the worst investment going at the moment, even if it is property. Whether this would be a savvy move or not would, naturally, remain to be seen (i.e. in five to ten years time) but then that is the nature of property investment. The problem is that for most of us to buy such an investment we’d need a little something called a mortgage and that, as they say, is the problem. I’ve heard they’ve taken to just laughing in your face now, if you go asking for one.

Late Night Entrepreneurs

2009-04-21T17:27:00.000+01:00

The late night kebab shop is an intriguing place. On the one hand, a messy, perhaps even violent night is pretty much assured, especially if you’re in a prime city centre location. But the rewards for enduring such undoubted inconvenience must be relatively high. After all, how else would so many such places stay in business?

News that one of Britain’s most well known fast food brands, Greggs, are to attempt a foray into the late night market shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, therefore. It seems their branch on Oxford Road, one of the main late night thoroughfares in town, is applying for a license allowing them to open until 4.30am. A good thing, no doubt, for many of the student types who frequent the area and have penchant for a steak bake.

It makes me wonder therefore which areas of this potentially lucrative market are being under-exploited. After all, what better a captive audience than a very drunk, very hungry one with crumpled ten pound notes falling out of their pockets? Captive audience probably isn’t the right expression there but without anything more than the neon lights of a kebab shop to tempt them currently, maybe a unique, creative alternative would turn them into a captive audience. The only thing is, what? What do you need at 3am when you’ve had...ahem...a few drinks, other than some greasy food?

Watching The Birds In Manchester

2009-04-16T15:53:00.001+01:00

Free entertainment in the city centre doesn’t come along very often so it should perhaps be of little surprise that when it does it’s of limited appeal. That’s not to take away anything from the news that Manchester’s resident peregrine falcons will receive some prime air time on the Exchange Square big screen, however. They’ve been flying around the city skies for a few years now and have even successfully produced offspring, which can only be a good thing. I like the thought that these little fellas are flying around above our heads while we’re all worrying about the price of petrol, or whatever it is we all think about:

Every day between 29th April and 5th July footage will be shown from a new ‘over-the-nest camera’ and an RSPB team will be on hand in the square with binoculars and telescopes to point out our feathered friends flying around in the skies above our heads. In truth, you probably won’t see much – the promised ‘action’ will no doubt involve the odd shot of an egg and a bird with a worm in its mouth but the mere fact that these creatures live here with us is, I think, reason enough to take a look.

'Three Course Menu'

2009-04-01T17:28:00.008+01:00

More from the increasingly strange world of Manchester’s fine dining restaurants as I received the new menus this week for the ultra flamboyant Vermillion, from the looks of it (not actually eaten there ourselves yet) a palace-like place in the wastelands near Eastlands. Strange place to put a very smart restaurant that, incidentally, although I suppose being right next door to a premiership football club isn’t that bad an idea for a place that styles itself on opulence. They are looking at city centre venues though, rumour has it, which would probably be a good move.

Anyway, that’s not what I was going to write about. Following the Ithaca nonsense,Vermillion seem keen to get in on the act with their new ‘Business Lunch Menu’, which provides diners with a choice of five different menus to choose from. I don’t have a problem with that – I’m sure it’s all very nice, but posh-restaurant-stupidity syndrome strikes again at the bottom as they describe each ‘menu’ as being three courses. Tea or coffee is now, apparently, a course. Laughable, if it wasn’t so earnestly tragic. Here's a snapshot for you - we got a four year old child to point out the important bit:

My Guinness investigations started last night, incidentally, as I popped into the Town Hall Tavern to kill half an hour. There was an old guy at the bar drinking a pint of the black stuff, which is generally considered a good sign – old men don’t take any crap, especially when beer’s involved. I asked him how his pint was. ‘Very nice’ he told me but I was unfortunately soon to realise that his taste buds must have been somewhat diminished by his years. The scores were recorded as follows:

Pour: 8/10. Left to settle and topped up nicely.
Look: 5/10. The head weakened significantly within a minute.
Taste: 6/10. Unmistakably Guinness and not the worst pint I’ve ever had but it was watery and had a slightly tobacco-tinged aftertaste, which isn’t a good thing.

Nice pub though and friendly staff and locals but the best Guinness in Manchester? No. The search continues.

Good News!

2009-03-31T16:30:00.003+01:00

Without wishing to turn this place solely into a regurgitation of what’s on the BBC News website, I feel compelled once again to talk about an item of news. Don’t worry – I promise to get onto more investigative and interesting topics soon but this is worth a mention. What with all the gloom in the press at the moment and reports of stabbings and murders three times a day (seemingly), this is the sort of story we need to boost morale a bit. It goes a little something like this:

In a pub in Bury an altercation develops between two men, for reasons unknown, and the instigator of the incident stabs the other man, inflicting serious wounds to head and body. Attacker flees. Female friend of victim chases attacker, catches up with him, floors him and holds him in a headlock until the police arrive. After prosecution, man is jailed for a minimum of 3.5 years.

Here’s a rather poor still of something going on in the pub:

I like stories like this. Not only does it offer a real life example of the classic good versus evil scenario, it...well, that’s it really. What more do you want? I’d just like to have seen his face when this woman was squeezing his neck for all her worth. Well done friend of attacked man in Bury pub!

Confectionery Police

2009-03-25T15:57:00.004Z

More from the front line for you here: Last week a woman was asked to leave a cinema and ‘threatened with the police’ (how that works I’m not sure – were they wielded baton-like in front of her face?) for...wait for it...trying to take sweets into a cinema!

The bewildered woman was innocently entering a screening of one of the latest brainwashing attempts from Hollywood when she was taken to one side and had her bag searched for ‘recording equipment and alcohol’ (that’s what the cinema said). What they found was, apparently, much, much worse – a bag of Revels. They probably looked a bit like this:

Quoting company policy, the complex’s manager explained that, as they weren’t bought from the overpriced vendor in the foyer, the sweets would have to be confiscated and returned after the film. The woman refused, ‘out of principle’, and was followed into the screening by the manager and security and told the police were being called to come and sort her out.

Needless to say, she spent the duration of the film in a state of anxiety, afraid to even look at her handbag for fear of the confectionery police stepping in with their batons (made from Curly Wurlys?) to stop her accessing her Revels. Quite aside from the point of this whole story, whatever that is, and what it says about ‘the world we live in today’, this, to me, is just one more reason not to bother going to the cinema.

I’ve long held a dislike for cinema visits and probably haven’t been for a number of years, but the reports I get from cinema going friends don’t provide me with much inclination to venture back. The price is one thing, obviously. £7 a ticket! (I’ve just looked that up) Blimey. And that’s before you’ve even got there and considered sustenance. Then you squeeze along an aisle into your uncomfortable seat and have to sit and wait like a prisoner waiting for his breakfast as they try and work the projector to start the film. Then it starts and people around you make lots of noise, laugh in the wrong places, talk and generally annoy. Toilet break? Forget it. They won’t pause it for you. Cold beer? Ha - no way. And the film’s probably shit anyway.

In search of the black stuff

2009-03-19T17:15:00.005Z

As I’ve very kindly (or foolishly, depending on your outlook) been given free reign over this here Web Log, I’ve decided to indulge myself a little and write about one of the many things that I privately obsess over – Guinness.

Guinness, as any drinker of the black stuff will tell you, differs from a lot of the other staple bar top offerings by varying wildly between pubs. A lager, for example, is not of too great a refined or complicated constitution as to seem much different from one establishment to the next. There may be subtle differences, and perhaps even the odd occasion when one would be forced to exclaim that a particular pint was ‘awful’, but in general lager is lager. Bitter drinkers will probably step in and say that the much wider field of bitter, or ale, has infinitely more complex and differing presentations between public houses; indeed, ‘they do a good pint’ is a phrase you will hear many a bearded man aloft bar stool utter. I do not dispute this but merely offer the following in explanation: I don’t drink real ale much, I prefer Guinness, and this is my blog and I’ll write about what I like, thank you very much.

Finding a good pint of Guinness is a surprisingly hard thing to do and something that non-Guinness drinkers will find difficult to grasp. I offer no help to you – my words here will confuse and baffle you no matter what explanation I offer so in keeping with the approach with which I am accustomed, I will carry on regardless and start by attempting to explain what it is that the discerning Guinness drinker is looking for:

1. The pour. Yes, believe it or not, the manner in which this wonderful fluid is poured does make a difference to the taste and enjoyment of the beverage experience. The glass should be filled from the pump at a 45 degree angle to approximately three quarters of a pint and then LEFT TO SETTLE. Yes, I’m sorry, I’m shouting, but this is important. By settle I mean that the main body of the liquid should become black – all of that surging and storms that you get in the sea with the horses...sorry, in the glass, should calm down before anything else is done. It needs to settle and then, only then, can you top the glass up to the rim (or preferably just proud of the rim), holding it flat, producing a decent sized head. Which leads me neatly on to the next important point:

2. The head should be a creamy white colour, NOT LIGHT BROWN/GREY/YELLOW. That is a sure sign of a bad Guinness before you’ve even tasted it and something that will have the Guinness pedant crying inside, or possibly all over the bar, before the preparation of the drink has even been finished – if it’s brown put it down! Is a mantra probably no one adopts. Similarly, if the head is anything but thick, creamy and full, you’re in for a disappointing experience – in no way should the word ‘watery’ be used when describing a pint of Guinness.

3. Now, finally, we can get round to the hopefully enjoyable activity of tasting the stuff. The all important first mouthful will communicate with you immediately the quality of the pint you have in your hand. Creamy, almost sweet head should give way to thick, bitter stout that bites ever so slightly as it hits the back of your tongue and slips down the throat. As you continue to enjoy, the head should be ringing the emptying glass – this indicates not only a clean glass but, most importantly, clean Guinness - the key to this whole endeavour. When you’re done, two things should happen that would indicate that you’ve just had a decent pint of Guinness: 1. You will want to slurp up the last of the head remaining in the glass and it should be creamy and even slightly sweet – not brown, watery and rancid. 2. You will want another one.

Sadly, experiences as perfect as this are very few and far between which is why I am launching – yes, launching! – this mission: To find the best Guinness in Manchester.

In order to inject some sense of order to this endeavour, the quality of the Guinness that I sample on my adventure will be measured using the characteristics detailed above, namely pour, look and taste. Marks out of ten for each shall be awarded, producing a total out of 30. Let’s be clear: This is not a review of Manchester’s bars and pubs. I don’t give a shit what the bar staff look like or if the place is nice and cosy; for the purposes of this research I will solely be interested in the state of their Guinness. Let the games begin!

Think you’ve got the best Guinness in Manchester? Or do you know where we might find it? Leave us a message here and we’ll check it out!

Ithaca and the Disappearing Lunch Menu

2009-03-11T17:10:00.004Z

Occasionally it comes to pass that we are able to leave the toil of our battered keyboards and visit some of this city’s eating establishments, often under the pretence of offering an opinion of said establishments for the purposes of entertaining our readers.

I’ve no idea why I’m writing like this, I’ll revert to type: We sometimes do restaurant reviews, as you may or may not know. Like this one.

We went to a really posh place called Ithaca the other week for lunch, as they kept sending us emails pushing their ‘amazing lunch offers’. We weren’t that impressed – the food was pretty swanky but as it purported to be ‘lunch’ we were, with hindsight foolishly, expecting to come away feeling like we’d had lunch, not just a nibble on a few bits of posh food. You could, if you wished, read the long winded account of this experience here.

Two things struck me following that particular visit. 1. The restaurant doesn’t really know what it wants to be. On one hand, it’s one of the poshest, most exclusive places in town, on the other it wants the likes of us going in for lunch (‘us’ being the majority of the population who want to eat lunch for less than a tenner most days). 2. They change their menu so often they’ve started contradicting themselves and, ultimately, confusing those with whom they’re meant to be colluding (i.e. us). Example: Had we gone there two months prior to our visit, we would have eaten four ‘courses’ (I use the term loosely) for the same amount of money we paid for three. They wiped out a whole course without adjusting the price.

OK, so, so what, right? I mean, who really cares? A posh restaurant can’t quite get their lunch offer right. People are dying in the world, some people can’t afford to eat, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!! etc. But...well, but nothing. There’s also other things in the world to worry about and we’ve made it our priority to worry about lunch injustice in Manchester.

This week I get an email with yet another ‘new lunch menu‘ attached, this one purporting to be part of their ‘biggest promotion ever’. It’s more expensive - £20 this time instead of the £16.50 we paid – and is sold as a ‘three course lunch’. Take a look at this:

Oh, where to start! First of all, Miso Soup is not a course. It’s a bowl of salty water. End of story. Secondly, don’t be fooled by the mains. They sound nice and probably do taste nice but a portion they are not. A mouthful or two at most. I’m assuming they’re classing ‘extras’ as their third course, which, as you can see, cost extra. Brilliant little twist they’ve put on the concept of ‘set menu’ there, isn’t it?

You do get a glass of wine or beer with this but let’s look at it objectively. You’re basically paying £20 for a drink and a quarter of a plate’s worth of food. I’ll say it again – this is not lunch!

Now I know what some will say, so let’s address them now:

“It’s not £20, it’s £10 because of the 50% off offer.”

Doesn’t matter – if it’s £10 worth of product (and I would say not even that) then sell it for £10, don’t dress up some £20 with 50% off crap to make it seem like we’re getting a bargain.

“What do you expect, this is top quality, expensive dining.”

Stop trying to get people in for a £10 lunch then! If we wanted fine dining we’d either save up and go on our 30th birthdays and have a decent sized meal of it or wait for our parents to visit and make them pay. Don’t try and sell me a ‘three course lunch’ then say, “Well, it’s not a whole lunch because we’re actually really exclusive and you can only afford a bit of a lunch.”

I think that’s what grates the most – the arrogance that underlies it all. The thought that they have to do us a favour in order for us to have the privilege of experiencing even a small amount of what they offer. Well balls, is what I say – I know of plenty of places in the city where you can get properly fed for under a fiver, so Ithaca can stick their 50% con up their Miso Soup.

House Swap

2009-03-10T12:53:00.002Z

A life of solitude and peace and quiet is perhaps something we all crave at times. So imagine yourself on a small island off the coast of Cork, Ireland, with 11 acres of land to play with, unspoilt sea views and the concept of close neighbours being a completely alien one.

That dream may not be as unreachable as you might imagine because a man with all of that is looking to swap his two bedroom, traditional fisherman’s cottage on Long Island, off the coast of Cork, with a property in Greater Manchester so he can be closer to his mum. Here it is:

The house comes with a Land Rover and a boat (the land goes right down to the sea) and sits in land that has been designated as a site of special scientific interest, which should mean no one’s ever going to stick a big apartment block up next door. It’s on the market for £309,000, the price having shot up somewhat since he bought it in 1990 for just £12,500, but the current owner has registered with a house swapping website and is looking to move back near to his mum, who is in a care home in Worsley.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea I shouldn’t think – there’s no Tesco nearby, I’m not even sure there’s a pub anywhere within walking distance – but the sea views, fresh air and lack of thousands of other people must surely appeal to a few. I quite like the idea. Not sure about the commute though.

University Challenged

2009-03-03T16:07:00.005Z

So The University of Manchester has triumphed, albeit a little belatedly and only thanks to a technicality, on academic quiz institution University Challenge. It’s not quite the air punching, party-inducing circumstances the team would have liked as it comes after Corpus Christi College, Oxford, actually won the televised show and had the title stripped from them this week after it was discovered that one member of their team wasn’t actually a student. Something, one might reasonably assume, that should be a fairly basic criterion to fulfil when applying in the first place.

It’s actually all fairly boring, with Manchester being very meek about accepting the title and the offending non-student apologising a lot and insisting he didn’t know he was in the wrong. Considering he declared his course dates correctly on his application (he was a student when it started and graduated some way through the series) and was accepted on to the show, you kind of get the impression it should be the programme’s producers getting all the attention, and blame, and not him.

So the real story of this year’s ‘challenge’, which was filling front pages long before this deception was brought to light, is of Corpus Christi captain (and ‘intellectual blitzkrieg’, according to the Guardian) Gail Trimble, who wowed the press and, apparently, the public with her encyclopedic knowledge and dominance of point scoring (she won a third of her team’s points in all matches, or whatever you call them, before the final), as well as the offer she received from Nuts magazine, following the short lived victory, proposing the exchange of English pounds for the opportunity to take photos of her sans clothing. Which is all, you don’t need me to tell you, rather weird. Here’s the lady herself, in the middle. The dude on the left is the cheat:

Lovely. Or not – I’m not here to judge, merely provide sarcastic and sometimes withering asides, so running with that theme I’ll leave you with a question from this year’s final:

“If a tap leaks a millilitre of water every second, how many 10-litre buckets will it fill completely in a day?”

Answer: Who cares, what’s on channel 4?

p.s. It’s 8.64 really.

Out with a Bang

2009-02-17T17:11:00.004Z

So it’s B for Bad News now, not bang (I’m sorry - as puns go, that was pretty lame). Manchester landmark, symbol of the city, multi million pound sculpture B of the Bang, built to mark the 2002 Commonwealth Games, that leans at an angle greater than that of the leaning tower of Pisa, consists of 180 hollow tapered steel columns, weighs 165 tonnes...you all know where Wikipedia is so I’ll shut up with all the facts...the point is The B of the Bang is going to be leaving us. Part of the problem – OK, the whole problem – is that it started falling apart and when you’ve got large, heavy steel spears falling from the sky on unsuspecting City fans’ heads, it’s time to have a bit of a rethink.

In its current state, it already has something of a reduced impact compared to its former, fully spiked self, as a number of the steel poles have been removed, or shortened, to prevent accidents. Much discussion has taken place as to its relative value for the city and, ultimately, the council have said ‘someone can rebuild it safely if they want to, but we ain’t paying for it’, which is fair enough, especially considering the people who made it should have, you would think, built it so it didn’t endanger the lives of the public.

I quite like it for what it is; I quite like the idea behind it and the visual impact of it but I do find myself thinking, how hard can it be? I mean, we’ve managed to put people on the moon, build huge aircraft that can carry hundreds of people around the world in a matter of hours; we can build buildings that reach kilometres into the sky, seemingly defying gravity and common sense...but Manchester can’t manage to properly fix a spiky bit of metal to the ground without it falling apart. I think maybe we should stop publicly drawing attention to this fact.

Manchester's Restaurant Crisis

2009-02-10T16:50:00.006Z

Manchester’s restaurants have been in the news quite a lot of late. The big stories of the last couple of weeks are: ‘Manchester loses Michelin star’ and ‘Swanky restaurants close’.

The news that Altrincham’s Juniper, carrier of the city's solitary star from culinary scrutinisers Michelin, has now lost its highly sought after award caused much scratching of heads and expressions of bewilderment from the city’s foodies. It was the only shining beacon of hope in an otherwise star-less city; somewhere we could look to in moments of culinary frustration, and now it’s gone. The fact that Birmingham now has three Michelin-approved establishments only caused further dismay and many are asking the question, why doesn’t Manchester have any top class restaurants?

The answer, according to chef, restauranter, and ex-owner of the now defunct Brasserie Blanc, Raymond Blanc, is due to high rents. And the choosing of crap locations. "It is my fault that we chose the wrong location in the city,” he said, “but the council in Manchester really needs to look at the level of the rents that are being charged in the city centre and do something about it.” Here’s a little picture of Raymond for you:

Now, this wouldn’t be a news story if we didn’t mention ‘The Credit Crunch’, now formally known as ‘The Recession’, which does, of course, also have something to do with this. It has apparently claimed another scalp in the shape of the aforementioned Juniper which, whilst still reeling from the loss of its Michelin star, has also now apparently closed down.

Another blow to the higher end eating options in and around Manchester, which brings us back to the point, so eloquently put by Monsieur Blanc himself thus: “I cannot believe that Manchester, the second biggest city in England, can't sustain a quality restaurant. All the great European cities are judged on their cuisine and restaurants as much as any other part of their culture and if you look at Manchester's record of culinary achievements, it is appalling.”

Well, when you’re having a moan why not really go for it, right? This little outburst unsurprisingly caused some ripples in the gastronomic pool of the city. Marcello Di Stefano, owner of local Italian restaurant San Carlo, was one of the first to step up. “It’s a load of rubbish,” he said. “People seem to have this silly idea that getting something like a Michelin star rating is the be all and end all. The real food that people want is simple good cooking, but that will never get the Michelin star. And the people who have tried that level of fine dining in Manchester have never been good enough.”

Perhaps the question we should be asking is not whether Manchester will ever have a Michelin-starred restaurant again but whether we actually want, or indeed need, one.