Newly opened boutique hotel The Alan has landed itself a rave review from national restaurant critic Jay Rayner, despite a distinct lack of customers. The hotel, which quietly opened its doors on Princess Street in February, was more or less empty when the critic for The Observer turned up to eat.
Rayner did qualify that he was in town ‘school night’, a Tuesday to be exact, and noted that a number of Manchester restaurants are now waiting until Wednesday to reopen after the weekend due to issues with staff and other factors. But he went on to say that people ‘don’t know what they’re missing’.
“The Alan isn’t just quiet. It feels abandoned. A single employee is on duty in the main foyer this evening, eyeing the entrance. He greets us cheerfully as we push through the doors. Perhaps he’s grateful for the company,” he notes.
But this appears to have nothing to do with the food on offer, which he describes as ‘a truly delightful and admirably tight menu of diverting dishes, which reveal their joys a little at a time.
The restaurant is being run by chef Iain Thomas, who formerly ran the kitchen at the Edinburgh Castle in Ancoats. On the menu, the dishes are separated into ‘light bites’, small plates and grills, as well as other sides and salads.
Among the dishes that hit the right notes were the ‘lamb fat cabbage’, and the posh take on the classic family fave, the arctic roll ‘to remind me gently of what it was to once have been an easily pleased seven-year-old’.
Rayner also notes that it all represents good value for money, with the small plates a maximum of £6.50, and the grills - from Tib Street’s acclaimed Butcher’s Quarter - also reasonably priced, with a hefty pork chop at £16 and a Barnsley lamb chop at £23.
“The Alan is a hotel restaurant with which you can be on first-name terms,” Rayner concludes. “Right now though, it needs a few more pals. Not least because what is going on here is thoroughly alluring.”
It’s just the latest glowing review from Rayner for the city. He rated The Black Friar over in Salford last December, and called his meal at Erst in Ancoats one of his best of the year.
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