Mr Thomas's
Chop House, 52 Cross Street, Manchester
Tel: 0161 832 2245
Price: Meal for two including drinks and service, £70
Bad meals, like terrible sex and car crashes, stay with you. Whatever you do, you can't get the grisly details out of your head. So it was with last week's lunch at Langtry's. For seven days I was haunted by the thought of that high-ball glass laden with crispy shrimp and marie rose ice cream. As Joseph Conrad might have said, had he ever moonlighted as a restaurant critic: 'The horror, the horror.' Still, it's not fair to lay into the same restaurant two weeks running, however tempting it might be to do so.
It is important to move on. When I have a truly dreadful meal, all I want to do is have another meal. I go in search of the experience I was searching for in the first place. And so to Manchester, and Mr Thomas's Chop House, which has been there since 1867 and where the chefs would rather bang a nail up their nostrils than serve a marie rose sauce ice cream. Mr Thomas's is aware of its history, much as Dolly Parton is aware of the size of her chest. I could say it wears that lineage lightly, but I would be lying. By the door is a sign declaring the place to be a 'Victorian fantasy', and the menu is littered with phrases like 'A most pictorial Goosnargh duck' and 'A most excellent seasonal Cheshire gammon'. It is a glossy theme park of a place, of the sort that would make people from Oklahoma with arses the size of Nantwich gawp and dribble.
And yet it is saved from silliness by two key facts. First, the wonderful interior is the real thing. The owners describe themselves as custodians and should be congratulated on the restoration work they have done to the glazed jade green and teapot-brown tilework. And then there is the food, which respects the traditions it is drawing upon without being hidebound by them. So you can shout all you like that the good Victorian burghers of Manchester were unlikely to have had any truck with moules mariniere or crab risotto, but that is a kind of piety I have never bought into. In any case, these are mere supporting players to the star turns.
Take their corned beef, made on site in a 10-day process, the dense, pink fibres finally cooked up with onions and new potatoes to produce a heart-stopping hash. This is fashioned into a crispy cake and served with a poached egg and a dark, fat glossy comma of HP sauce. It's the sort of food the Department of Health would ban if they could. The onion soup is, likewise, a dense confection, lifted away from its French cousin by the addition of Lancastrian heft. Put it this way: when the bowl of soup arrived, my companion ignored his spoon and set to work with his knife and fork. 'They know how to do a crouton here,' he said. 'Elephants could walk across this one.' And he was right. Thick, sodden toast layered with melted cheddar hid what was more a stew than soup. He did eventually use his spoon, but only for form's sake.
The suet casing on their steak and kidney pudding may have been a little heavy, but the meats had been cooked long and slow and I appreciated the jug of gravy to loosen things up a bit. And it came with big jolly garden peas. Another main of slow-braised venison and claret casserole lacked a little liquor (try saying that drunk), but the flavours were all there, and it came with a silky celeriac puree and some fine dumplings, which gladdened the heart while stopping it.
Naturally, to cook big-fisted, paunchy British food like this, you need training in a French kitchen, which is what the executive chef has. Simon Stanley has worked with Pierre Koffman, among others, and that was most obvious in the puddings. It may have been advertised as spotted dick with custard, but the yellow stuff was light and frothy enough to fall under the heading creme anglais. After a meal with this sort of bulk this light touch was a good thing, as was the nubbly, textured sponge of the dick itself. We also tried their burnt English creme, a creme brulee by any other name, mostly because we were told it was flavoured with Baileys, and this offered me the opportunity to get critical. No chance. It was soft and light, and all the Baileys did was offer a welcome boozy end.
The same people who run Thomas's also run Sam's Chop House just round the corner, another cosy boozer with great lineage. There are also rumours that they are planning an entirely new place in a big retail development going up in the city. Curiously, I suspect that it's once the food is taken out of its glazed and varnished 'heritage' setting that it will really be able to shine.
Finally a quick update on my recent review of Alexander's in Limpsfield, where the pricing was akin to liposuction on the wallet. Three courses will now cost £40, and they've introduced a set lunch at £23.50, hardly cheap but a price that makes it worth trying what is undoubtedly food with ambition, even if some of it is misplaced.
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