Manchester is a city that has been re-imagined in glass and steel. You only had to look at our table at Le Mont to see that. My, but the size of those wine glasses. Flip 'em over and they could double as greenhouses. And those cloches, each the size of a Mercedes hubcap. Even the menu was a triumph of engineering: two clanking, inch-thick slabs of Plexiglas or some such, held together by rivets so chunky they probably fell off the back of a shipyard. Then there was the table. It was so large my companions had to email me their side of the conversation.
I say all of this (almost) admiringly because I recognise that the restaurant is only reflecting its surroundings. Le Mont occupies the fifth and sixth floors of the newly opened Urbis building, an extraordinary £30m shard of glass and steel commissioned as part of the Commonwealth Games developments in the city, and which houses a museum of city life. As an expression of Manchester's self-confidence, this skyward thrust of quartz is unbeatable. Likewise the view of the city afforded from the vertiginous dining room, a place suffused with clean white light, which looks out across a skyline now equally crusted with steel and glass. We went on the first day of the games and never have I come across a town with such a palpable and joyous buzz.
All that said, I have my doubts about Le Mont. Urbis has been built with public funds and is maintained by the city council. Is it right that the top-most floors of this building, presenting the very best views, should be handed over only to those who, like the Medicis, could afford to reside above the heads of the herd? The answer, I suppose, lies in the price. I complained a few weeks back about paying for the decor with each forkful. Here, however, I think it reasonable that access should come at a cost. And Le Mont can cost, if you order from the carte. However, they do also offer three courses for £21.95 from a menu boasting a lot of choice.
As to the food, it is probably about as good as it needs to be. The chef is Robert Kisby, who made his name at the Charles Hallé restaurant at Bridgewater Hall, and who shows an admirable concern for the origins of his ingredients. His menu is full of phrases such as 'Cumbrian fell-bred lamb' and 'Silfield Farm free-range rare-breed pork'. While it sometimes suggests the gastronome's equivalent of designer-label fetishism, it is encouraging that the produce comes from within striking distance of the restaurant.
All Kisby needs to do now is get the quality of the cooking to match the quality of those ingredients. I'm going to be generous and assume that the problems had to do with the restaurant having been open only a few days, for they are not insurmountable. The meat in a salad of roast quail with a raisin stuffing, for example, ordered as a starter by a couple of us, suggested a bird which had been cooked off a little too early in the day and then left to chill too long. However, a lobster soup had an admirable depth and intensity without being too heavy. In the main courses, the quality of the lamb shone through, even though one person's rack was nowhere near the pink requested. My skate wing with beautiful little shrimps was sweet and caramelised but, like the lamb, a little overdone.
Honour was saved by the puddings, which were delicious constructions - particularly a millefeuille of crisp almond biscuits sandwiching soft, vanilla-poached apricots. The wine list is interesting, including a poky bottle of something red and Uruguayan, and there's also a Bollinger champagne bar if you like that sort of thing. All in all, then, a noble venture, if one hidebound by pretensions. Why, for example, are the menu descriptions first in French? Why those ludicrous cloches? And why give a restaurant in a building celebrating the life and vitality of a city like Manchester a Gallic name like Le Mont? I thought the Mancunians had done away with those cultural cringes long ago.
