Hawksmoor
Ian Jones, Food and Drink Editor
When you step into Hawksmoor, you’re entering a world that could have existed a century or two ago. Modern fripperies are kept to a minimum – it’s all about a superior dining experience once limited to Manchester’s high society, now available to all.
The venue plays an important role in this. It’s a late Victorian courthouse revamped into an elegant dining destination featuring multiple side rooms, cubbyholes and mysterious doorways. It has all the old-world glamour of its Dickensian pomp, minus the creaking floorboards and chain-clanking ghosts.
And it’s not just about those dimly lit evening meals. Hawksmoor Manchester has a very appealing lunch menu that offers a hearty main dish, such as rump steak or charcoal chicken, alongside a salad (or beef-dripping chips if you’re feeling devil-may-care). All available for under £20, every day of the week bar Sundays.
It’s not just the food, the staff are some of the best in the city. They’re easy to chat with and hugely knowledgeable, with a knack for pinpointing the exact dish you should try (let’s call it steak-dar).
If you’re heading over for an evening session, don’t dive into meat head first – pace yourself with the roasted scallops. Roasted in the shell with white port and garlic butter, they’re the very best execution of a time-honoured dish.
The bone marrow starter is a treat for heavy-duty carnivores. Large wedges of bone, split in half, are topped with a generous snarl of onions – soft and sticky where they mesh with the marrow, crispy and caramelized at the edges. It comes with two thick slices of Pollen-baked sourdough toast, perfect for spreading, or ripping and scooping.
Hawksmoor’s reputation rests on its steaks. The fillet steak, cooked rare, is as good as it’s possible to be. It comes charred and crunchy on the outside and vibrant fleshy purple inside, scattered with thick chunks of salt. Want a layer of fat with your beef? The equally high-quality sirloin has that all-important thick ridge of delicious salty goodness running alongside the meat. It’s heaven in a skillet.
The sides and sauces are unmatched anywhere else in the city. The garlic mushrooms are big and bouncy, the beef-dripping fries never lose their crunch, and the mash is 50% butter, by my reckoning. This is a good thing. Make sure you get a pot of the bone marrow gravy – it almost always comes back to the meat.
But not always. The hake dish is an inspired creation – topped with chilli, garlic and rosemary and roasted in parchment paper. The white fish is buttery soft and impossibly fresh, while that sit-up-and-take-notice seasoning manages to feel classic and innovative all at once.
Even the desserts have that timeless feel. The pineapple upside-down financier (so-called because it resembles a bar of gold) is a masterpiece of taste and texture, taking in hot fruit, freezing coconut ice cream, sticky caramel and crunchy biscuit crumb.
The peach melba pavlova has a sharper, tarter feel, with tangy reduced fruit compote draped over a smooth mound of sorbet. Both are a great, bright summery end to a meal at one of Manchester’s most revered restaurants.
Ask for the best steak in Manchester, and the name Hawksmoor will come up umpteen times, and rightly so. But it’s about more than just excellent cuts of beef – the whole Hawksmoor experience is a template for sophisticated dining in a modern city.
