Stanley Street, Salford, Manchester (0161 832 4080). Meal for two, including wine and service, £75
There is about Robert Owen Brown a touch of the Dickens character; one of those sturdy, reliable ones who turn up a few chapters in when everything is looking bleak for the hero, and hangs about the page looking like a place of safety. He has ginger curls, wears unbuttoned waistcoats, calls men sir and women madam in a way that is entirely unforced, and has a robust response to anything he judges to be total bollocks. Whenever I write about his food I am compelled to mention his refusal to put the words petit pois on the menu. "They're little peas," he once told me. "We're not in France." Indeed not. We are by a canal in Manchester.
I have been directing people to the pub where he now cooks for a while now, but have held off writing about it because of what might be called Owen Brown's "stamina" issues. He has had a habit of setting up somewhere, getting good reviews, then disappearing. It happened last at the Angel, an old boozer that smelt sweetly of damp dog. But, with good people backing him, he has been dug in now at the Mark Addy pub for a year or two.
It is a mixture of wonderful bare-brick arches, and 70s additions – smoked glass, modern window frames – which will be equally wonderful when someone gets round to destroying them. The current team cannot, by the terms of their lease, do anything about these interiors issues. But with Owen Brown in the kitchen, they have created the kind of gutsy gastro pub Manchester deserves.
To say the chef is a follower of Fergus Henderson of St John does not do justice to their friendship. The two are famous for disappearing off to drink beer and swallow oysters in the small hours, and the menu reflects that. In some ways this sort of food works even better here. St John in London is a great restaurant, but it is also a self-conscious statement. It is dinner for the design crowd. At the Mark Addy it is just dinner. Henderson's roast bone marrow with parsley salad is often on the menu here. Much of the rest, however, is less homage than Owen Brown paying his respects to the under-celebrated inner and outer bits of the beast. Alongside the laminated standard menu there is a changing list of specials which tonight has two ways with tripe: both pickled in the local style, and long braised in Madeira on toast. It is dark and sticky and slippery.
A bunch of his starters come on toast like this, lending to this first course the feeling of an old English high tea. There is a disc of creamy, day- old curd cheese, with a sour edge, on a toasted, buttered crumpet. It looks like too much cheese to too little crumpet, but it all disappears quickly enough. Another plate has buttered buckling on toast, the edges of the salty, oily fish crisped nicely. We despatch this swiftly as well. Starters are rarely above £6 and mains no more than double that.
We order a long-braised, chicken-stuffed pig's trotter and it comes with piped ribbons of perfect mash with wild garlic. A crown of pigeon is a little overcooked, but tastes of a bird that led a proper life, and is accompanied by a scoop of impeccable black pudding. The bird was shot in the hills outside the city and to celebrate the way it reached its end, a salad is presented in a shotgun canister, as if it were a vase. This is what passes for whimsy in Owen Brown's kitchen. The menu offers lots of other good things, like slow-braised faggots, roasted hogget and smoked haddock with poached duck egg. The wine list is short and gloriously priced; we order a fabulous Cahors which I have seen in London for north of £30 – here it costs £22.
What it doesn't have is much in the way of desserts. Oh, they are there, but Owen Brown isn't that interested in them. A treacle tart is OK, but rough and ready. A baked apple stuffed with sultanas is undercooked. Still, they stock very good ice creams by Mrs Dowsons. And now that Owen Brown is finally staying put, he can afford to hire himself a good pastry chef. Then the Mark Addy would be complete.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
