Umezushi, Unit 4, Mirabel Street, Manchester M3 1PJ (0871 811 8877). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £40-£110
At times the dedicated restaurant-goer must behave like an intelligence analyst; must become the George Smiley of the table, forever sifting through drifts of information in search of reliable leads. You must filter out the blurring white noise of those who are paid to hustle through the agency of free meals. You must weigh the knowledge for chronic ignorance or plain stupidity or both. Use of words like “mouth” and “watering” are a giveaway.
Never is this more so than with Japanese restaurants serving sushi. Because the good stuff is such a bespoke operation – if you find a sushi place with more than 20 seats, shake your head sagely and move on – they tend to occupy a quiet spot in the hungry conversation. A restaurant with, say, nine seats doesn’t need to make that much noise to fill them, as long as they are good.
I keep being told of a tiny restaurant in the suburbs of a Midland’s town, established because of a nearby car plant full of Japanese salarymen who need their fix, that deserves my attention. I hear whispers of airing-cupboard-sized places in the south London suburbs with a blond-wood bar that seats just six. I’m told that’s where the serious raw fish action is. But it’s hard to be sure. At the top end of sushi, at the place where the most perfectly fashioned and wielded knife meets the most perfectly sourced and kept fish, the difference between “Meh!” and “Oh My!” can seem so very slight. (Though it isn’t.)
I have heard talk about Umezushi in Manchester for a while now, but only as a light murmur, as if those speaking are desperate not to give away the secret. Unfortunately, I’m a journalist; giving away secrets is my job. Four years ago, when it first opened, it would have been reasonable to assume Umezushi’s site was chosen specifically to avoid attention or, indeed, custom of any kind. It occupies a tight railway arch down below Manchester Victoria station. Mirabel Street is a pretty name for a bit of industrial rough trade, all grimy blackened brick and knackered lock-up. It’s a crime scene waiting to happen.
But the centre of Manchester continues to expand and now it’s starting to look like an inspired choice. The city has wandered down to Umezushi. Inside it’s all deeply varnished blond wood and calm. There is table seating for 10 with space for another four at a counter before an open kitchen. Apparently it’s owned by a chap from Taiwan. The cooks are from Korea and, on the day we were there, Spain and the Czech Republic. The skills, they told me, have been learned here on the job. This makes sense. The Czech Republic is not hugely famous for its sushi traditions.
At this point I should define terms. This is not the very finest sushi in the land, but it really is very good indeed and, at the price, a bit of a miracle. We asked them to throw everything they had at us and received a bill for £110 for two. You could eat very well for half that. Nigiri sushi is around £4 per two pieces, with a large sushi set at £23.50. Or there’s an express lunch for around a tenner a head. The good signs start with their own sweet-sour pickled ginger, which is not Barbie pink. It is a healthy oatmeal colour, with the tattered, fibrous edges of the home-sliced stuff. There are crunchy pieces of pickled radish. There’s a tight knot of slippery wakame with a huge savoury-sour whack from the festering place on the beach where sea meets sand.
Most importantly, there is the rice, which is lightly vinagered and served just warm enough to let the flavours play out. The grains hold together without being mush. I was once told that sushi is really all about the rice. It’s not all about the rice, but the rice is bloody important. Somebody here has given the matter their attention.
We begin with sashimi, including neatly cut pieces of sweet scallop and tuna, laid prettily across shredded mooli. Next the first of the nigiri, the best of which is scorched sea bream, the hastily applied heat encouraging the lubricious oils to run. A dainty pile of tobiko – micro fish roe – gives a hit of salt and sea. There is salmon and more tuna, each decorated with micro herbs which indicate somebody cares about looks. There’s glazed and grilled eel, still warm to the touch. It’s a punctuation mark of caramel flavours against the subtlety of the others. Slices of wagyu, sensitively flamed, almost justify the £10 price tag that accompanies eating the Audrey Hepburn of steak. It is a cheerful, buttery hit of dribbling animal fat.
A king prawn hand-roll disappoints. The prawn is a sizeable beast, but it’s wrapped in enough rice to re-sculpt Devil’s Tower from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. California rolls of crab are a little moist in the centre, but good all the same. The specials board offers roasted salmon head and hake collar. We order both and watch as, between tending to our raw fish needs, they turn the cuts over hot coals until the skin is blistered and the flesh underneath has steamed in its own moisture.
The fish arrive on the plate looking like themselves: here, half a salmon head with staring eye and jaw; there, the collar of a hake with the curving bits of cartilage just before the gills. It’s a lesson in waste management – don’t throw anything away. They also tell us that the good stuff may require a little more work to get to. We pull at the sweet pearly flesh of the hake with our fingers; scrape along the curve of the salmon jaw with the pad of one thumb to pull away the treasures. These are the rarely explored regions of the fish that work the hardest, hence they taste the best. The skin is crisp and salty and releases its oils obligingly.
The express lunch menu includes a dish of Taiwanese braised belly pork across rice, also available as a small side. It is a big, sticky bowl of sweet, salty, sticky pig and will be the very thing for cheap lunches when winter comes. It is truly well-sauced pork. You get the message by now. Umezushi is a bit of a diamond in the rough; a hidden temple to the worship of good things. Go there. Just don’t tell anyone else about it.
Jay’s news bites
■ Sushi Tetsu, in London’s Clerkenwell, is the sushi bar of your dreams. Unfortunately it will probably remain in your dreams. It seats only seven so, unless you’re the sort who treats bagging reservations like a military campaign, it ain’t gonna happen. Still, it’s worth knowing about, just in case. Precision, killer ingredients, and enormous attention to detail: it’s all here (sushitetsu.co.uk).
■ Two Michelin-starred restaurant The Greenhouse in London’s Mayfair has received a one-out-of-five hygiene rating from Westminster Council for problems with ‘layout, ventilation, handwashing facilities and pest control’. In a statement the restaurant said: ‘We were bitterly disappointed by the poor food hygiene rating. At no time has the quality of the food that we serve to our customers been compromised.’
■ Another reason never to visit a Harvester: a branch in Gloucester has erected a Christmas tree, alongside an offer of a free bottle of prosecco if you book before
31 October.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
