If you’ve not been to District, the futurist Thai BBQ place on Oldham Street, it might well be because at a minimum of £50 for the smaller of its tasting menus (and £100 for the extended version), some could feel priced out of the party. But things are changing.
The Michelin contender - it made it into the Michelin Guide’s recommended places in the city earlier this year - is hoping that shifting its focus to a more standard set-up will open itself up to a new audience. In addition, chef and owner Ben Humphreys has completely overhauled the menu, adding a host of new dishes, and those that have been kept have been tweaked too.
But the main difference, basically, is that now you can order dishes separately. The M.E.N donned its Blade Runner trench coat and headed off to the Shoulder of Orion (will stop this now) last week to do some galactic exploring.
RERAD MORE:
The raw stone bass was a hit from the previous menu, previously served tartare-style, and now in little discs, pleasingly arranged in a bowl with a beyond-punchy nam jim sauce (equal parts sweet, sour, salty and spicy) and tiny crisp shards of dried purple yam. It’s tweaked and improved, somehow, because it was already great.
Lamb and mint gets a Thai twist, with the Herdwick lamb neck coming as a nam tok salad, the pieces of lamb barely shown barbecue coals - it’s rare, still bleating, and all the better for it - and then scattered with rings of crisp shallots.
Most remortgage worthy item on the menu goes to the Kagoshima wagyu massaman, at a palpitation-inducing £38, considering these are small plates. The expense is there in the sourcing, of course, with Kagoshima in Japan being the home of likely the best wagyu beef in the country - and therefore the world. So it’s going to cost a few quid, there’s no avoiding it.
A piece of striploin comes on a puck of soft confit potato with a moat of massaman curry, while a separate plate turns up with a fermented potato roti, heavily charred and barbecued, and on top, some minced wagyu, Indian keema style. The latter is delicious, but the striploin, soft and delicate as it is, lacks flavour and depth, and tastes like it might have neglected to be seasoned.
A Chang Mai-style jungle broth welcomely interrupts our meat-heavy selections, verdant green and soothing, and loaded with earthy root vegetables, some floating, some shaved, crisped and layered on top like a bird’s nest.
The absolute winner, however, is the pigeon satay, one of the smaller starter plates. The name is a bit of a misnomer - there’s not much anyone would recognise as traditional peanut satay going on here, but the nuttiness from pumpkin seeds nods in that direction. No matter, this is a sensational dish, the pigeon precisely pink and pretty as a picture.
On the side, there’s pickled and charred gem lettuce, with fermented yellow bean and toasted yeast, which hits those bits at the back of your tongue and gets shovelled down very quickly indeed, and the chicken fat rice, surely the best rice in the city, sprinkled with crispy chicken skin.
The food’s as head-turning as ever, then. And the music was a bit quieter this time too, so all to the good. It was bonkers last time. But being able to head in and pick a dish or two rather than embark on the full journey to the outer rim and back could well be a game changer.
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