Things that should be done on the clock include the 100m, the 200m, the 400m, the 800m, the 1500m… you get the idea with that. Things that should not be done under the pressure of a stopwatch include having dinner.
That’s why the whole ‘bottomless brunch’ business has never held much appeal. Having someone time me eating? It’s bad enough when you’re told your table is needed back in two hours.
All this concerns me before I re-enter SakkuSamba, the Brazilian-Japanese (yep) fusion restaurant which opened on Bridge Street last summer. I was there on opening night. Immediately behind the table was a gentleman in a studded gold lamé catsuit on a raised runway, vigorously gyrating and high kicking. He was almost in your dinner.
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It was not what you might have called relaxing, but I appreciated his enthusiasm greatly and still watch the video I took sometimes, just to give me a lift.
“It’s bougie in here,” my daughter says, and it really is. You’re bathed in a hot pink glow like a neon sunbed from the moment you walk up the stairs to the moment you leave, and the ceiling is covered completely with faux cherry blossom. Some things are clad in plastic foliage, presumably representing the majestic rain forests of the Amazon basin.
As a 12-year-old, she slips in under the wire of SakkuSamba’s all-you-can-eat pricing structure, paying £17.95. Adults pay a more robust £45.50 (and that’s without any drinks), but they’ve not seen her put sushi away. She’d eat her own big toe if it was wrapped in rice and seaweed and lashed with soy sauce.
It’s a huge place. And there’s a scrum of bookings turning up on the way in. For a cold Wednesday night in mid-February, it’s doing impressively well, though I do feel significantly underdressed.
We’re taken to exactly the same table as the fateful night of the dancing man. He’s not here this time, that’s probably more of a weekend thing, but I’m a bit sad.
We’re walked through the menu by the lovely lady from the front desk who takes us to the table (more on the service later). You have an actually rather generous one hour and 45 minutes to fill your boots - parties of three or more get two hours. You’re handed an iPad style tablet, and are allowed to choose four plates each before sending through the order to the kitchen.
Then you’re locked out for, I think, 12 minutes before you can order another four each. I can’t recall exactly because at this stage I’m like a sprinter in the blocks and I’ve stopped listening. It might have been 10 minutes.
The orders are called ‘rounds’ (yes, like a boxing match), and the first one is a blur. We're mashing at items on the screen with clumsy fingers and loudly asking each other questions - HAS THAT WORKED? HOW DO YOU FIND THE DRINKS? HAVE YOU SEEN DUMPLINGS ANYWHERE??!! - like we’re on the Crystal Maze and Richard O’Brien is playing the harmonica frenziedly behind us. It’s actually quite a lot of fun.
“No noodles, I’ll get full too quickly,” she says, and I couldn’t be prouder at the tactical eating approach going on. The music hammering out merely adds to the whole franticness.
She likes it. “It brings the vibe,” she explains, which I suppose it does, if the vibe is Ibiza terrace at 7am with a man from Chelmsford chewing his own face off mithering you about where you’re from.
Something about the all-you-can-eat premise immediately makes you cautious. What’s the deal? Where’s the scam at? Will all the food arrive in half an hour, eating into my eating time?
Nope. The first dishes are on the table easily within 10 minutes. And look, I won’t sugar coat it, they’re not great. Crispy deep fried prawns don’t taste of anything much at all, neither the crispy squid, nor the sticky wings, which are covered in what tastes like sweet ginger jam. Not a lick of salt on any of it, and the squid would hugely benefit some mayo or other sauce to slather on. It was 'plain', said the girl child.
The crispy beef should be renamed ‘leather shoe laces of beef’, though that might impact on the dish's order rate. The sashimi and sushi are fine, the sushi, painted with hot pink goo, is a particular hit with the daughter.
It’s been hit and miss so far, but we’re most eager for the main event; the journey to the distant meat skewers of Brazil. We order one of everything - a pichana steak, some beef fillet, beef rump with chimichurri, some lamb, possibly others.
Again, they arrive expediently enough. They are sadly not good. The picanha - a superb cut generally, with a joyous layer of fat over the top - did not deserve this shabby treatment. It’s thin, grey and overcooked, and again, barely a grain of salt on it.
Though expectations should clearly be taken into consideration here. A single steak at Hawksmoor could easily cost £45. But nonetheless, the skewers are a genuine disappointment, each woolier and chewier than the last.
The lamb was fine, but there was barely a reference to chimichurri on the chunks of rump, though at least they were cooked pink. ‘Almost mooing’, in fact, observed the girl, gulping down slivers of red meat like Kes.
I plough through, chewiness notwithstanding, because we’ve ordered it, but I’m feeling increasingly like my DNA will soon be approaching partial bovine. A teeny bowl of seaweed salad arrives (delicious) and it’s so cool and soothing, I want to rub it on my face to calm the gathering meat sweats.
But be warned, you’ll be charged extra if you over order purposely, and rightly so. Waste in restaurants is no joke, and all-you-can-eat walks a very fine line in that regard.
There are highlights. The gyozas are good, and the spring rolls are surprisingly excellent. The sushi, sashimi and salmon tataki are also good. Lean towards the Japanese end of the fusion spectrum, and you’ll be much better served. We didn't try the noodles (see above), but they looked excellent, particularly the udon.
The service is also a highlight. Each and every member of staff we encounter is a credit to the business and to Manchester hospitality in general. A couple things don’t arrive, obviously an issue under normal a la carte circumstances. Here, we’ve been lavished with so much food by this point anyway, and the place is heaving and hectic. To start whinging about a missing miso seemed churlish.
Oh, and that one hour, 45 minutes time limit? It’s more than ample. Please, please be calmer than we were. Turns out it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
As long as you’re seeing this as a volume game, you shouldn’t really be too disappointed. You may even find it to be decent value, if you truly embrace your inner competition eater. But if you deem food to be a bit more than mere fuel, perhaps SakkuSambu isn't for you.
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