MAYA Manchester Restaurant
Ian Jones, Food and Drink Editor
Maya may have pulled off the hospitality signing of the year by poaching the mighty Shaun Moffat from Edinburgh Castle. South African-born Shaun is known for his inventive take on British cuisine – our love for his peerless chip butty goes way back – but what has he brought to Maya?
First, a bit of housekeeping – there’s more than one Maya. There’s the excellent ground-floor canalside bistro which we covered recently, but for all you keen-eyed gourmands, there’s the below-ground upscale restaurant where the high-end culinary magic happens. (And below that, there’s the nightclub, but let’s leave that for another day.)
This subterranean restaurant could be one of the city’s best-looking dining spaces. The lights are dim but well-placed, the centrally-located bar means great people-watching opportunities, and gives the whole thing a timeless transatlantic fine dining feel.
Shaun’s new winter menu showcases what he does best. It demonstrates his focus on seasonal ingredients and local sourcing, delivering flavour-packed morsels like the crunchy-then-soft tuna hash brown snacks.
From the starters section, the fish course is a bold house-cured steelhead sea trout done two ways – thick, fresh slices on one side, diced and combined with a bright Victoria plum relish on the other. It isn’t so much reinventing the wheel as polishing and refining the wheel to a level rarely seen.
Similarly with the chicken – the meat is soft and tender, the coating is crunchy and full of subtle spices, as you’d expect, but throw in a mellow parmesan cream and peppery mustard leaves and you end up with a plate of fried chicken fit for royalty.
As for mains, if you know Shaun’s cooking, you know he’s all about that beef. As such, the bone-in sirloin steak (sourced from ex-dairy cows, pleasingly) is a must. The meat is cooked to ultra-precise levels of perfection, smothered with a rich, sophisticated jus. Top tip, get some of the excellent rosemary fries from the sides section and use them to soak up the sauce for probably the most memorable mouthful of a grand meal.
Desserts provide the required level of pizzazz. Not least with the plum sorbet – two scoops in an iced glass, unexpectedly showered with a fizzy glass of Crémant at the table as you watch.
The custard tart is a personal favourite, combining an expertly made pastry with some crumbled biscuit and a dollop of crème fraîche that comes sporting a little lattice wafer hat.
Clearly, Maya means business. This three-storey destination is based in one of Manchester’s most in-demand locations, and now with Shaun Moffat installed as head chef, it looks set to become one of the city’s top dining destinations.
