‘This is the kind of restaurant that restores my faith in the business’
I’m inclined to dust off this review by saying, “Just go to The Manor”, inserting a giant picture of Green Egg-roasted cauliflower and then buggering off to the pub. Because that’s the crux of it: this new offering from the team behind the equally brilliant The Dairy is the restaurant equivalent of that hoary old “if you only see one film this year” trailer. It really is that good.
Sadly, the pub’ll have to wait, because you do need to know about the place. It’s got the lot: engaged, knowledgeable staff; excellent, exciting cooking. Yes, exciting. I don’t know about you, but I can’t contemplate their sourdough bread with whipped butter, sleek with chicken fat and studded with golden nuggets of crisp chicken skin, without something of a frisson. The place looks good, in a pre-bashed-about way. The fact that it’s not another corporate opening is hammered home when you go to the loo: money clearly ran out before they could redecorate, and you’re encouraged to, er, customise with markers and spray paint. First, it makes me go eww. And then it makes me go aww.
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