Gwafu Vegan at Bridge 5 Mill

Manchester’s supper club scene is responsible for some of the most extraordinary culinary events in our booming city. The likes of Sampa, Niwa Yakitori and The Little Sri Lankan host fun-packed events that deliver novel takes on their respective cuisines. Time to add a new name to that illustrious list: Gwafu Vegan.

It’s the brainchild of Cameroonian-born and adopted Mancunian Ngwafu Lawson-Tansie, who has built quite the brand over recent years. This includes TV slots, internships at the likes of Skof, and a sideline in nationwide puff-puff deliveries. Puts your in-depth knowledge of Netflix reality slop into sharp relief, no?

Her cooking ties her Cameroonian roots with whatever her own allotment has produced that week. Seasonal with a capital ‘season’.

Bridge 5 Mill is the host for this one-off supper club, a converted silk mill on the Ashton Canal run by environmental charity MERCi. It’s solar-powered, plastic-free and has a fully vegetarian policy; not an atom of dead flesh may pass through these doors. In short, the ideal home for a vegan supper club.

Following a welcome drink – sidenote: there’s a beer from local lads Balance Brewing that could convert the pope – we’re seated in one of the best secret spots in the city. It’s on the top floor, full of natural light and canalside views for miles. Those lucky, lucky Victorian silk-spinners.

The meal begins with bobolo, aka fermented cassava, steamed in banana leaf to become luxuriously dense, almost chewy but not – rather, it melts – and served with an oh-so-sour sauce. It’s bright, fresh and unlike anything else in the wider Greater Manchester borders.

For the main, a cabbage parcel stuffed with rice and fermented mushroom that easily could pass for forbidden meat, teamed with veg plucked direct from Ngwafu’s own allotment that very morning.

Dessert, a crispy-but-cakey chin chin biscuit with cherry and Supermalt chocolate mousse. It’s all about satisfying snaps and dips and scoops. These are all-new flavours and textures, lightly bitter with a nicely matched dash of salt.

It’s more than just a sit-down meal though, Ngwafu’s event matches her energy, with a party-positive soundsystem-led vibe. Tom of Bitter Leaf Industries fame brings a well-attuned all-vinyl set that does the job. Not too overpowering, not too background – the perfect setting for a communal, getting-to-know-you feel.

It feels like Ngwafu is on the verge of creating something big in Manchester. She’s everything a good supper host should be – enthusiastic without being overbearing, and with a head packed full of smart culinary ideas. One to watch.