Spring Gardens, Manchester
Six by Nico brings a brand new
concept to Manchester. There’s only one menu. It’s six courses. It’s available
for six weeks. Then it changes, never to be seen again.
Scottish-Italian chef Nico
Simone brings his unique gourmet experience to Manchester, with a new
restaurant occupying the old site of Roc & Rye in Spring Gardens, alongside
the likes of Rosso and Brown’s. He’s already established restaurants in
Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast.
He’s already established
restaurants in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast, and his first menu couldn’t have
been more appropriate for his Manchester debut. It was ‘The Chippie’: six
courses all themed around the tastes, scents and sensations of the Great
British Fish and Chip Shop. Forget your battered sausage, giant cods and steak
and kidney puddings; this is your chippy tea recreated and reimagined.
Each standard tasting menu is
£29 per person, which is quite good value given the vast array of foods and
flavours that you’re sampling. There are some additional ‘snacks’ which you can
add for an extra £5 to kick-start your feast. Each course has an accompanying
wine recommendation, which you can choose to pair with each course for an
additional £25. If you want a drink, it’s probably worth doing, as the drinks
menu is rather pricey.
The optional extra snack at
the top of The Chippie menu was a Manchester Egg: a hard-boiled egg coated in a
soft black pudding and breadcrumbs, with home-made brown sauce piped onto the
top of it. The egg was served in two halves, making it perfect for sharing –
you didn’t really need a full one given that you had so many other flavours on
the way. There were also two pieces of sourdough bread with creamy chicken fat
butter. The Manchester Egg was actually bigger than most of the courses, but it
was an extra £5, so it’s good that they gave you your money’s worth.
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| Manchester Egg |
Appetite well and truly
whetted, it was time to get stuck into the meal itself. Each course had a title
which associated with a fish and chip shop. There were vegetarian alternatives
to each course, but the themes remained the same.
The first course was ‘Chips
and Cheese’, something that’s never really appealed to me. This was a salt and
vinegar potato croquette, nestled on parmesan espuma (that’s Spanish for froth)
and curry oil. What a way to kick things off: creamy, cheesy and delicious.
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| Chips and Cheese |
Second was ‘Scampi’: the
closest thing to the classic fish, chips and mushy peas. This consisted of
breaded monkfish cheeks served with gribiche, herb butter and pea emulsion.
Gribiche is a Spanish mayonnaise-style sauce made with eggs and mustard and is
bright green, resembling mushy peas. This course was one of my favourites. It
was exactly what it was supposed to be.
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| Scampi |
Course number three was the
‘Steak Pie’. This was beef shin with mushroom duxelle, burnt onion ketchup and
a red wine jus. The beef was cooked to perfection and melted in your mouth.
Mushroom duxelle is a mixture of chopped mushrooms, onions, herbs and black
pepper, sautéed in butter and cream and reduced to a paste. It had a moose-like
texture but was extremely flavoursome and complimented the beef and the
tanginess of the burnt onion ketchup extremely well. This course was a flavour
sensation and very rich in comparison to the previous one.
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| Steak Pie |
Next up was the ‘Fish Supper’:
cod with confit fennel, samphire, beer, picked mussels and brandade. This
course boasted a decent sized piece of fish, with the fennel, samphire and
pickled mussels forming a bed underneath. The cod was deliciously salty,
contrasting beautifully with the acidic flavours of the accompaniments.
Brandade is a mixture of salt cod and olive oil.
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| Fish Supper |
The penultimate course, and
the final savoury dish, was ‘Smoked Sausage’: pork belly with salt baked
celeriac, caramelised apple and black pudding. This course was a treat for the
eyes and the nose as well as the mouth. It was served under a glass dome,
which, when removed, revealed a powerful meaty smoke, sending all your senses
into overdrive. The pork was actually a conglomeration of pork belly and pulled
pork, rolled into a cylindrical sausage and wrapped up in a crispy potato
sheath. The sweetness of the caramelised apple and the saltiness of the baked
celeriac was a sensational combination. I was a little sceptical about this
course, as I’m not the biggest fan of pork, but it was definitely one of the
most flavoursome of the courses.
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| Smoked Sausage |
The final course, the dessert,
was an innovative take on the ‘Deep Fried Mars Bar’, the Scottish chip shop
staple, allowing Nico to pay homage to his Celtic routes. There was Caramelia
Chocolate Mousse with orange sorbet and cocoa nibs. There were so many
different elements to this dessert, it was almost like a three in one. The
mousse was light but had a rich, chocolately depth to it. The zingy orange
sorbet really refreshed the palate and was the perfect way to round things off
after six courses of rich, intense flavours.
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| Deep Fried Mars Bar |
Six by Nico has brought an
entirely new dining concept to Manchester and, unsurprisingly, it’s proving
very popular. Despite being six courses, nothing was overly rich, meaning you
could manage all the food quite comfortably and you’ll feeling satisfied but
not stuffed.
It’s a shame I’m writing this
at a point where The Chippie is no more. That’s the unique thing about Nico’s
enterprise: once a particular menu has been served for six weeks, it’ll never
be cooked or tasted ever again.
Sadly, this means it’s too
late for you to try The Chippie. This month, they’ve moved onto Mexico. You
could make return visits to Six by Nico and travel all around the world on a
culinary cruise. Not to mention, it’s quite possibly the best value fine dining
restaurant the City Centre has to offer. A must for any enthusiastic foodie.
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