Bar Shrimp, Manchester M1: ‘This is meaningful, highly adept cooking’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants One of the best seats in Manchester, if not the entire north I’m perched on a tall stool at a new Manchester bar, perusing a menu of fishy things and various aquatically adjacent items: Lindisfarne oysters, devilled eggs with brown crab and trout roe, hand-dived razor clams and scallop tartare with elderflower dressing. Bar Shrimp sits on New York Street, which feels weirdly fitting, because this place is much more “quietly sceney” New York than anything remotely “aren’t we edgy?” London. Glass-fronted, with discreet net curtains and a Tracey Emin-esque neon name sign, inside it’s draped, floor-to-ceiling, in red, just like in those red room scenes in Twin Peaks . Expect oversized, monogrammed ice cubes, nine types of mezcal and just as many amaros, as well as a menu featuring the likes of cuttlefish sandwiches and buffalo fried cod with blue cheese dressing. Bar Shrimp is a dog whistle to 1980s kids such as myself, who grew up seeing New York in the likes of After Hours or Wall Street , or in something with James Spader being up to no good and drinking Japanese whiskey highballs. It’s a bar opened by three friends: chef Joseph Otway, sommelier Daniel Craig Martin and general manager Richard Cossins, who met while they were all working at Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, New York State. (Blue Hill, in case you didn’t know, is catnip to the aloof foodie crowd – its customers wouldn’t be seen dead at Noma because it’s far too accessible). But does Bar Shrimp make a terrific fuss about this hallowed connection? Nope. Are there nods to Saint Dan Barber dotted around the place, or even in Higher Ground , the Bar Shrimp team’s acclaimed neo-bistro next door? Nah. Does Bar Shrimp even mention that it and Higher Ground are supplied by Cinderwood Market Garden , their own working farm in Nantwich, Cheshire, and pretty much in the spirit of Barber’s Blue Hill mantra? Barely. The Shrimp boys are far too cool to namedrop. Continue reading...
The Guardian Lifestyle • 3 days ago 
