One of my favourite places to eat in Glasgow is Alston
Bar& Beef, a fantastic restaurant hidden under Glasgow Central train station that
specialises in steak and gin. Not content with offering thediners of Glasgow
with top end prime beef and an almost endless selection of gin, owners Glendora
Leisure recently opened a second Alston Bar & Beef in Manchester’s Corn
Exchange. (The Alston name comes from the old street in Glasgow’s forgetten
past where the Glasgow restaurant is now located)
Recently myself and Nicola were visiting Manchester and upon hearing
that Gerry’s Kitchen would be in the city, we were kindly invited along to
Alston Bar & Beef Manchester to see how it compared with the original.
Manchester’s Corn Exchange is a Grade II listed building which has had a
colourful history. Originally built in 1837 as a gathering place for farmers to
sell their grain before being demolished and rebuilt in 1897. Economic
depression during the 1920s & 1930s followed by declining trade after the
Second World War seen the trading floor fall into disuse. Jump forward thirty
years and the building acted as home to the Royal Exchange Theatre Company as
well as a filming location for the popular BBC television show, Brideshead
Revisited, before becoming a gathering place for alternative communities and a
large market up to the mid 1990s. After suffering extensive damage as a result
of the 1996 IRA bomb attack, the building was renovated again and opened as the
Triangle Shopping Centre with Adidas, O’Neill and MUJI opening flagship
stores.
The Triangle was relaunched as Corn Exchange Manchester in 2012 with
plans to turn the building into a a food outlet and hotel and in 2014 demolition
companies started the painstaking process of ripping out modern fixtures and
fitting and restoring the building back to its Edwardian origins.
The resulting Corn Exchange is a fantastic hub of restaurants and
bar with a huge range of food options available. Keeping in character with the
Glasgow Alston Bar & Beef, the Manchester restaurant is also a hidden gem
with access to the restaurant through a entrance on Cathedral Gate before
taking a flight of stairs down into a huge bar and restaurant space located in
the bowels of the grand building.
The dining area is huge but lowered ceilings with exposed air
conditioning ducts plus art-deco style sliding glass doors help give the
restaurant a cosy feel. No expense has been spared with the interior of
the Alston Bar & Beef Manchester with marble bar and matching tabletops
plus Victorian styled hexagonal tiling immediately catching the eye and despite
the fact that this addition to the Alston brand is 200 miles away from the
original, the interior designers have done a fantastic job to replicate the
styling from Glasgow whilst adding something very unique to the Manchester
restaurant scene.
Alston Bar & Beef do two things extremely well - Beef
(obviously) and Gin, and as we had arrived a little early for dinner, we had
time to relax with a pre-dinner drink before taking our table. With an
extensive range of UK and world gins available, we struggled to choose but
Nicola eventually picked one of her favourites, Harris Gin served
with Fever Tree Mediterranean
Tonic while I decided to order something more ‘local’ and selected Three Rivers Gin which
was served with Double Dutch Tonic.
Harris Gin is often known more for its award winning bottle design
but the gin inside is definitely worthy of the beautiful packaging. It might
smell like a traditional gin with juniper and coriander seed dominating the
nose but the addition of locally foraged sugar kelp give a slight sweet finish
on the palate which is balanced perfectly with the saltiness from the tonic. As
for my own gin, distilled only a mile or so from the restaurant, Three Rivers
Gin ticks all the right boxes with almond and orange peel and oats helping to
create a creamy gin with a citrus bite. Double Dutch Tonic is the work of two
sisters originally from the Netherlands but now living in London who wanted to
create a range of mixers that complement the varying styles of gin that have turned
up over the last few years. Their original tonic is less intense than others on
the market and really allowed the flavours from the Three Rivers Gin to stand
out.
The a la carte menu has a good selection of dishes that aren’t
steak but as we were here for the beef, we wanted a good red wine to go with
the main event. The wine list is pretty extensive with a good range of red,
white and sparkling wines at budgets to suit everyone. We chose a bottle of
Ochagavia Merlot from Chile which was an easy-drinking wine with a good balance
of red fruit flavours and a slightly smoky finish - perfect for our Jasper
cooked steak.
The restaurant serves up a great value pre-theatre menu but as we
were eating a little later in the evening we were dining from the a la carte
which is varied enough without being too overbearing. Nicola opted for a
starter of Arbroath Smokie & Crowdie Roulade with Charred Corn, Baked
Potato Foam and Parmesan Tuile.
Big flakes of rich smoked haddock were bound with soft, crumbly
fresh cheese before being rolled in toasted breadcrumbs. The charred corn
brought a sweetness that was the perfect foil for the slightly acidic Crowdie
while the Parmesan tuile added a salty bite to the dish. The baked potato foam
didn’t really carry any real depth of potato flavour but that didn’t take away
from this starter being a great example of texture and flavour balancing.
I’m still not sure how I managed to avoid the steak tartare but
when our waitress asked for our order, I excitedly blurted out Lamb Belly! My
starter of Tweed Valley Lamb Belly with Anchovy Kedgeree and Lemon &
Coriander Oil was sublime.
The slow cooked lamb belly was soft and tender yet crispy on the
edges while the anchovy kedgeree brought just enough saltiness to cut through
the sweet lamb. No kedgeree is complete without a boiled egg and the accompanying
soft yoked egg was perfectly cooked and added further dimension to what was
already a well flavoured dish. My starter was finished off with a drizzle of
lemon and coriander oil which worked well with the lamb and acted as a pleasant
palate cleanser.
East Lothian master butcher John Gilmour supplies
Alston Bar & Beef with all of their Tweed Valley steaks, chosen from the
best Limousine cross Aberdeen Angus cattle which is dry aged on the bone for a
minimum of 35 days. In recent times, myself and Nicola have taken to
ordering a large steak to share along with a couple of sides and tonight was no
different as we settled on the 300g ribeye, cooked medium.
The Josper Grill is a marvellous invention, a charcoal grill that
doubles as a conventional oven which allows chefs to cook meat quickly and
at intense heat whilst adding all the flavour that you would get from the
hottest indoor barbecue.
There’s not much that I can say except that our ribeye steak was
pretty much perfect. Well seasoned, well flavoured and cooked exactly as we
like. Throw in a side of garlic and herb butter and you’ve got two happy
diners.
Our two accompanying side dishes were both perfect. The hand cut
chips, served in a cute copper cup, were crispy on the outside and fluffy
inside and seasoned with a scattering of sea salt flakes. I’m not one to get overly
excited about simple things like chips but these were fantastic and could
easily imagine spending a lazy lunch hour sat at the bar without a care in the
world as long as I had a cup (or two) of chips and a glass of chilled white
wine.
Macaroni Cheese is a great accompaniment to a good steak - I’m not
sure why but it could be something to do with the rich creamy cheese sauce
acting as a foil to the iron rich meat - but what ever it is, Truffled
Mac’n’Cheese takes it to another level providing that Chef hasn’t been too
heavy handed with the truffle oil (or fresh truffle depending on the venue).
This was pretty much bang on where it needed to be - the macaroni was cooked
well with just a little bite but the overriding flavour was still the sharp
cheesy sauce with subtle flavours of truffle doing enough to add a taste
dimension that worked well with our perfectly cooked ribeye.
I’ve said in the past that the poached pear dessert at Alston is
the best dessert in Glasgow and although we were both feeling quite full, we
couldn’t not check to see if it was as good in Manchester as it is back home.
A lightly spiced, soft poached pear was served on top of a bed of
toasted oat crumble with a copper pot of cream anglais and pear gel. The recipe
travels well and this was the perfect way to end our meal. The pear was soft
and juicy, the toasted oat crumbled added a balance of texture and the creme
anglais wasn’t too sweet. I’ve not eaten too many desserts in Manchester but I
might stick my neck out and say that the Alston poached pear pudding is the
best in the city!
With dinner finished and a lengthy walk back to our hotel ahead of
us, we decided to squeeze in one more drink before bracing the cold. This gave
us time to get a quick look at ‘1837’, a cool speakeasy style bar hidden behind
a velvet curtain. Named after the year that the original Corn Exchange was
built, this bar allows diners to enjoy their meal in the restaurant before
chilling with friends or family over a gin or two. Unfortunately the bar wasn’t
open on the quiet Wednesday evening of our visit but I can imagine that come
the weekend, 1837 is one of Manchester’s busiest yet best keep secrets.
So with our drinks finished, we made our way into the cold evening
with the opinion that everything that Alston Bar & Beef do so well in
Glasgow is replicated perfectly in Manchester.
We dined as guests of the restaurant but my review above is an
honest account of our experience on the night and I would have no
hesitation in recommending Alston Bar & Beef Manchester to anyone looking
for quality and style in the northwest. We would like to thank the staff and
management for their hospitality and generosity on the night and wish
them all the best for the future.
