Earlier this week, on one of the slightly cooler days, the New Islington marina had some unmistakable ‘on holiday’ energy about it. Folks reclined on the canal-side, feet dangling over the edge, glasses - or cans of G&T - in hand, enjoying the last rays.
“We could push everyone in,” said my lad, 14, and with a mischievous streak. We could. "You'd only get a couple really, before the rest work out what's going on,” I say, raining on the parade a bit with boring dad logic. We don’t in the end, though it’s obviously really tempting. Instead, we pull up a Scandinavian-looking picnic bench outside Flawd, the bar and restaurant on Keepers Quay run by Joe Otway, Richard Cossins and Dan Martin. Joe and Richard have some pretty brilliant stuff on their CV.
Joe was the head chef at the Michelin-star tipped Where The Light Gets In in Stockport, and Richard has managed renowned restaurants for renowned chefs in New York and London. He's worked with the likes of Marcus Wareing and Simon Rogan, who owns L’Enclume in the Lakes and which happens to have three Michelin stars.
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They know what they’re doing, basically. This is like Lewis Hamilton driving a Ford Focus, and if you want Michelin star-level knowledge of food at a fraction of the price, and with a fraction of the silly fuss, then you’ll find it here.
The bar has been open not quite a year, but in the past few months it feels like it’s being talked about a bit more, handsome plates of things turning up on Instagram and whatnot. On the evening we wander in, there are two nice lads from northern Spain who are showcasing wine from their vineyard - Flawd is a wine shop too - so a glass of chilled, sparkling red is recommended, and it’s pretty close to perfect. I forget what it’s called, but just ask, because they’re all amazingly friendly, and it’ll give them an excuse for a chat.
The dishes on the menu are written up on a chalkboard behind the bar, and they’re deceptively simple-sounding. Just a list of ingredients really - yellow beans, new season garlic, crème fraiche, for example. And that’s exactly what they are. All the fresh produce is grown in Nantwich at their own market garden called Cinderwood, a name which is starting to appear boastfully on other menus across the city as a prestige supplier.
So it comes out of the ground, and sometimes just a couple of hours later, it can be on a plate in front of you. It’s as uncomplicated as cooking can be, on the surface at least. See also the kitchen situation. There isn’t really one. Joe has a pressure cooker for flash cooking any vegetables that need attention, and there’s a sandwich press for anything that needs direct heat. And that is it.
So we order some bits, with prices sitting around an average of £6 or £7 a go. First to arrive is some bread from the Pollen bakery a few doors down the quayside, with some salty whey butter. I’d have been happy with just that, probably, and the lad’s eaten half of it before I’ve had the chance to prize it off him.
Then come the yellow beans with garlic, and on top, some toasted, crispy breadcrumbs, and lemony creme fraiche slicked underneath. “They taste like Frazzles,” the lad concludes, and he’s absolutely spot on. Again, I’d be happy with just this.
Some eye-poppingly green, lightly dressed broad beans turn up on a pillow of that bread. Cinderwood has millions of them at the moment, apparently, and they’re fiddly to prepare, so I appreciate the effort that’s gone into this dish. Even if broad beans weren’t already my favourite thing, which they are, they would be after this.
Then there are some tropea onions - long and gangly like spring onions - with crisp sugar snap peas, rhubarb and a chilli jam. The onions have been grilled on the sandwich press, and a there's a plate of purple kohlrabi which has been cut into spiral ribbons like a corkscrew, with a soothing dressing and little shreds of plums that were salted and preserved in 2019 and which zing in your mouth.
The absolute showstopper is a plate of carrots with a lake of perfectly smooth, pureed dayglo orange carrot on the bottom and deep purple carrots suspended on top, with herby nasturtium leaves scattered about. I’ve never seen a prettier looking dish of carrots in my life, and doubt I ever will. We also order a plate of smoked salami, a fennel salami and a chorizo, made in Brighton, and it's so delicate that it almost melts on your tongue.
The lad, who is generally a bit cream averse and not to mention being a teenager (teenagers and vegetables, meet oil and water) hoovers all of this down, hardly stopping for breath, so I have to trough it down quicker than I’d like too, else I might not get any dinner. At the end there’s not a scrap left - not. a. scrap. - and each plate is mopped so clean that they could probably put them back in the cupboard. I’ll just stress once more the words ‘teenager’ and ‘vegetables’.
Later this year, the team is hoping - finally - to start something more like a proper restaurant, rather than a bar with, essentially, no cooking facilities. But if they can do this without a kitchen, imagine what they might be able to do when they get one. It could be something breathtaking. Actually, scratch that. It will be.
Flawd, 9 Keepers Quay, Manchester M4 6GL
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