Proper fancy French food in Manchester? You won't find it here
Manchester's Northern Quarter isn't the first place you'd head for a fancy French meal. Come to think of it, Manchester full stop isn't the first place you'd look for one of those. Beyond the gems of Oxford Road, Rusholme and Chinatown, a few solid, mid-market Italians, and the odd decent hotel restaurant and independent, for a city of this size it's strangely devoid of anywhere you'd choose to eat. It's high time it had a proper posh French to call its own.
Enter 63 Degrees – tagline: "A taste of Paris" – which opened at the end of last year in the old rag trade district that's now colonised by bars frequented by the Mancunian version of the Shoreditch twat (Chorlton chump?). I'd heard good things, too.
Our enthusiasm wavered the moment we walked in the door. It's a dull, soulless room annexed to a boutiquey "aparthotel", whatever one of those is, with a nod to industrial chic in the piping and vents on the ceiling, mismatched lampshades and plain walls interrupted by stencils in designs of the kind peddled by the chancellor's family. The closed metal shutters of the tattoo parlour over the road were far more alluring.
It was also empty save for a pair of businessmen and a table of seven. So it's anyone's guess why the maître d' sat us at a table in the middle of the floor, leaving us to fight a pillar for elbow room while he resumed his chat with the business boys. So far, so Paris… on the up-itself front-of-house score, if nothing else.
Five minutes later, this charming man roused himself to ask if we wanted a drink, then took an age to bring two Ricards and a laughable amuse of three slices of saucisson between two. (The table of seven got bowls of deep-fried something or other. Not that I'm bitter.)
Oh well, at these prices – starters are £6.50-£12.80, mains £13-£25, puds £6-£8 – the cooking proper had to be decent, right? "Frogs' legs with cress cream" – the website has a shot of two sets of plump cuisses beside a dinky, watercress-green pond – was the meat from one-and-maybe-a-half legs (I'm being generous here, even if they weren't), impaled on a wooden skewer not much bigger than a toothpick and served in an over-salted cream. For £7.80! Pea cream with prawn wasn't much better: the cream (you may sense a theme emerging) was fridge-cold bland, as was the big saffron prawn perched on the edge of the glass, as if trying to escape. I knew how it felt.
Ten minutes passed, then 10 more, before the waiter deigned to clear the table, so we made our own entertainment with a bottle of fruity M de Minuty rosé. Maybe the kitchen was building up to the big reveal, because then we found out all we never needed to know about that name, 63 Degrees. I'll let the website explain: "Cooked long and low at 63°, poultry tastes like you've never tasted it before, incomparably tender and full of unforgettable flavours." They're not wrong there: the signature dish chicken was unforgettably flavour-free, the texture of a wet sponge and came in a nondescript cream (see?) sauce that played host to a miserable pair of rehydrated morels; a bizarre garnish of two "roasted" cherry tomatoes can't have seen the inside of an oven for more than a couple of seconds.
"Pan-fried sea bream, orzo risotto with vegetables, reduced veal jus" was another fail – at least the kitchen's consistent. The fillet was cooked well enough – so it should be for £22 – but the pasta "risotto" was a dairy-sodden (well I never) puck of carb that tasted of nothing much in particular. The waiter glanced in our direction long enough to see me picking at my food and ambled over to ask what was wrong. "It doesn't taste of anything," I sighed. "That's what the jus is for," came the reply. I'd been wondering what to do with the brown slick on the plate, so thanks for that, garçon.
Crème (aaagh!) brûlée "surprise" was indeed a surprise – it was a textbook take on the classic – but way too little too late, so we paid up and scarpered (I'll give you one guess as to whether we left a tip). A taste of Paris? Pfft! You're more likely to find that in Café chuffing Rouge.
• 63 Degrees 20 Church Street, Manchester, 0161-832 5438. Open Tues-Sat, lunch noon-3pm, dinner 5.30-11pm (Fri and Sat midnight). Meal for two with drinks, around £110.