Anyway let’s have a restaurant. To be honest I’m appalled at myself for not managing to go to this place before. It’s the Marble Arch, a splendidly-tiled brew-pub just up Rochdale Road from the Angel (as reviewed in the previous post). It was a Friday night and it was heaving! The main body of the pub crammed with post-work drinkers knocking back any of the 10 or so varieties of ale on offer. My friends had planned to go in there specifically for cheese and lo and behold by the time I got there they had demolished almost all of the platter leaving me with a crust of bread and a smidge of stilton. They agreed that they should really have opted for the larger plate (given that there were five people to feed) and half considered persuading the staff into giving us some kind of “upgrade”. In the end (after two of them had left) we decided that we should just go for the whole shebang and head down to the dining room and have some proper dinner. And somehow we all had fish.
At some point we had a brief discussion of the Manchester Blog Awards (yes, Secret Lunch didn’t get shortlisted but I seem to know all the winners this year) and realised one of our number writes on the Manchester Zedders blog - who were runners up. He had some kind of squid risotto, which looked very strikingly black what with all the squid ink. Our other remaining diner had what looked like some kind of fishy soup affair - not bouillabaisse but something approaching it. I can’t remember what they said about their meals and failed to go poking around their plates with a fork - so I’ll see if I can encourage them to comment instead.
I think I had pan-fried Pollock which came delivered with lots of rather tangy little shrimpy things and some interestingly multicoloured mash. The fish was perfectly cooked, clearly very fresh and about twice as substantial as it looked. Really I have no criticisms whatsoever. All in all an excellent place for varied beer and food and I’m looking forward to going back for some meat as soon as possible.
