Stretford is, according to my friend Thom Hetherington, an ‘up and coming’ area of Manchester. He knows about these things, being not just a Manc boy, born and bred, but something of a hospitality legend. When he tells me about Stretford Canteen, ‘a contemporary take on French brasserie dishes’, it’s simply a question of what time and when.
This small, simple restaurant is ‘made for damp, drab evenings’, says Tom
A week or so later, on a damp, drab Thursday evening, we meet in a small, simple but comfortable room and settle into the sort of dinner that’s made for damp, drab Thursday evenings. Soft, sunny ones, too. As we chew on hunks of crisp crusted sourdough bread from Pollen, a local bakery, and hot, golden, salty sticks of panisse (chickpea-flour chips), gloriously light and dragged through a tarragon-spiked mayonnaise, Thom tells me how the restaurant started as a pop-up in a nearby greasy spoon. Chef and co-owner Josephine Sandwith is the daughter of Maureen and David Sandwith, Manchester culinary royalty and the couple behind the city’s much-loved Beaujolais. It closed two decades back, but its passing is still much mourned.
We gaze out over a busy dual carriageway, with the Arndale centre next door, a study in tired, shabby concrete. ‘It’s a terrible site,’ Thom says between bites of excellent serrano ham and cool, crunchy celeriac remoulade. But the shopping centre is on the verge of redevelopment (like so many other parts of this great city) and once it’s done, they hope to move into a more salubrious location.
We share a French onion soup, mouth-blisteringly hot, and thick with slow-caramelised alliums hidden beneath a raft of gruyère-encrusted bread. And a fine pâté en croûte, the pastry rich, the jelly copious and the minced pork studded with cornichons and pale chunks of chicken. There’s confit duck leg, all soft flesh and golden skin, sitting atop a mess of coco haricots drenched in good olive oil, with a splodge of a sharp, herby sauce vert; steak au poivre, cooked very rare, has the sort of creamy, peppercorn-rich sauce that packs a true punch. Oh, and a glorious wodge of dauphinoise potatoes. For pudding, a fat wedge of lemon tart, more sharp than sweet. This is classic French bourgeois cooking, with a well-chosen wine list and the sweetest of service. While it may be grim outside, in here, things are anything but.
About £40 per head. Stretford Canteen, 118 Chester Road, Manchester; stretfordcanteen.com
★★★★✩
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TOM PARKER BOWLES finds contemporary French cuisine overlooking a dual carriageway in Manchester