William Sitwell reviews Pip, Manchester: ‘One's eyebrows are raised at the portion control'

Telegraph

06-05-2025

This week's review was supposed to be about Kaji, a place that's all big screens, loud tunes and tall flames. Or, as they put it themselves, where 'the thrill of fire-driven cooking meets the pulse of high-energy music'. It's a Japanese restaurant, whose stoves – behind the long, central bar – are manned by a collection of burly lads. It's all tummies, bald heads, tattoos and heat.
And while the service and the sashimi are good – excellent fish, some of it cured, and with perfect body-temperature sushi rice – the place is afflicted by some overbearing cooking that cheapens the noble name of Japanese cuisine: a pair of nori seaweed crackers come as balls filled with sickly sweet kimchi ketchup in a vulgar fist-fight with some creamy cod's roe. Some fried oysters (always a terrible concept) drown in a dump of mayo and hot bonito sauce, and lamb chops fail the tender test and are properly wrecked sitting on a vulgar pond of sticky 'tomato ponzu'. No beast should die to have that stuff squirted anywhere near it. And Kaji is a Japanese gaff without sake. Which is like opening a British pub in Tokyo and forgetting to put an ale on tap.
All of which brash (and pricey) torture makes Pip such a great-value tonic. This latest addition to the city's generally fabulous dining scene is in the new Treehouse hotel in the city centre. It takes up the whole of the lobby, and a wonderful thing that is too, being a charmingly colourful and comfortable space.
The place is clad in wood, ropes and greenery – the veritable treehouse – and the chef is Mary-Ellen McTague, an earthy character, a sort of Alice Waters of modern-day Manchester. Her menu distils elements of local food culture, bringing them to the table – via great charm by the way, as the staff are a dream – with considerable finesse. Although such is the level of refinement that one's eyebrows are raised at the portion control.
I was worried my Lancashire hot pot would leave me struggling to rise from my chair, imagining a vast scoop from a large casserole, a steaming mass of potato slices atop a hearty stew. But instead came a dainty oval pot of braised shoulder with a small spoon of cabbage and an oyster shell filled with salty sauce.
It was fabulously good though, an elegant version of this classic dish. And there was similar Borrowers -style hilarity with our starter of British charcuterie. The waiter had even hinted at its vastness, to such an extent that I said I'd have it anyway and then perhaps they could box the remains of this charnel house of cured meats. Instead came three slices of bresaola and two of coppa. We swallowed them merrily, with the crunch of melba toast, quicker than you can say 'smörgåsbord, what smörgåsbord?' But, as with the main course, the flavour was perfect.
We had snacked on naughty little treats of smoked nuts and cheese gougères and, that meat plate aside, a starter of creamy wild garlic soup, with little bits of spongy goat's cheese bobbing around. It was a gorgeous thing, deft and velvety, capturing the flavours of spring.
My pal Flora had a chicken dish; tender slices of crisp-skinned breast with a little open pie of leg meat. Enough for her, but I would have asked for both legs and the rest of the bird.
Pud was a shared apple trifle, a gift from heaven in spoonfuls of custard, soft sponge and apple that made me want to issue a diktat that all future trifles must be like this: ditch the sherry and pour on the calvados.
Bravo, Pip. Pip pip!