Six By Nico Deansgate

New menu: Six by Nico Deansgate has announced its new menu, Mexico, which celebrates the best of the country’s culinary scene. Available at both the Six by Nico Spring Gardens and Deansgate restaurants.

Taking inspiration from hidden street food connoisseurs, some of the most renowned restaurants, and local family recipes, the newest menu promises to immerse each guest in Mexico’s traditional culinary scene.

The six-course tasting menu starts with the tostada with a flavoursome prawn, cucumber & shallot, creme fraiche, burnt cucumber & guacamole. The caldo de lubina combines sea bass with a white bean & chorizo spiced hot broth, and the ‘mole’ features a slow-cooked chicken leg roulade with crispy tamales, serrano pepper mayonnaise & tomato mole.

To finish, a pastel Roldan Tres Leches combines pecan cake, horchata, vanilla Tres Leches sorbet, and citrus. With all Six by Nico menus, a six-course vegetarian menu is also available, with dishes such as the elote with sweetcorn fritter, queso fresco, and salsa verde and the barbacoa with calcot onions, roasted garlic emulsion, smoked ketchup, and smoked almond pesto.

Priced at £42 per person with the option to enjoy an expert drink pairing with a £30 supplement.

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Restaurant review November 2023: Six By Nico has done it again. This new Deansgate venue is bigger and grander than the (very good) Spring Gardens location, while the staff and food are as high quality as ever. New to the concept? It’s arguably one of the most important restaurant ideas in recent years, opening up the world of fine dining to all, by offering accessible and affordable tasting menus, switching to a new concept every six weeks, hence the name.

A wealth of inspiration goes into each course, demonstrating deep knowledge of all kinds of cuisines, from the humble British chip shop (reworked into something beautiful, naturally) to Thai, Catalonia, Mexico, and many more. The launch of this second Manchester branch sees an old favourite re-enter the mix: Cooking Tokyo. It’s a journey celebrating the best of Japanese food, inspired by a trip to Tokyo by the eponymous Nico and his team.

The opening salvo of chicken karaage is a juicy little morsel, full of deep chicken thigh flavour. The barely-there batter is well-spiced, crisp and satisfying, smartly contrasted with shavings of pickled ginger. A sweet sparkling Spumante from Emilia-Romagna washes it down nicely, leading you into the next dish, where it comes into its own.

The enoki mushroom tempura is a work of art – almost too beautiful to eat. The small tree of deep-fried enoki may look delicate yet has a gnarly crunch. Beside it, atop a quenelle of mushroom duxelle, sits an array of carefully interspersed daikon and raw mushroom discs dusted with cep powder. The whole thing is decorated with dots of zingy ponzu gel, and may possibly be the mushroomiest mushroom that ever mushroomed. 

Next up is the okonomiyaki. This is a supremely rich version of the beloved Japanese pancake dish. A semi-circlet of fluffy pork & prawn pancake is topped with lashings of date-flavoured okonomi sauce and kewpie mayo. The pork, tasting much like char sui, is seriously meaty and well complemented by large chunks of succulent prawn, full of flavour. The light red French wine pairing is absolutely spot on to balance out the strong flavours of this dish.

The ‘ramen’ which follows is not what it seems. Subversively, the kitchen team has omitted the noodles, normally central to the meal. In a rich and exciting tasting menu, this is a wise, albeit surprising, choice as it allows the rest of the ingredients to sing. A crispy-skinned miso sea bass comes with a dinky little fish gyoza, Tokyo turnip, shimeji mushroom and gloriously sticky cured egg yolk. Your waiter will provide a little theatre by pouring out a light and fragrant kombu dashi across the lot, before your very eyes.

Our brilliant waiter, Alice, rather accurately introduces its pairing of Viile Metamorfosis Fetească Regală as “a complex wine for a complex dish”. This vanilla-scented dry white is tangy, apricot tinged, and, we’re reliably informed, very popular at Romanian weddings.

Tonkatsu comes next. Belly pork is coated in an unctuous yakitori sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Its titular neighbour on the plate is a perfectly executed slice of pork cutlet in crispy panko coating, topped with lightly spiced Hokkaido pumpkin purée. Between them nestles a quenelle of “ham jam”, a concoction we would seriously love to take home to spread on toast. There’s a little blob of surprisingly spicy mayonnaise with sesame overtones and a garnish of caramelised white cabbage. Goes fantastically well with a Hungarian Merlot, in case you were wondering.

Finally, you’re treated to the whimsical Strawberry Candy: a sublimely creamy white chocolate parfait with strawberry gel, matcha sponge, delicate meringue crumble, strawberry sorbet and a strawberry-flavoured sugar shard. Naturally, this is matched with a terrifically sweet dessert wine – a late-harvest Viognier Sauvignon Blanc.

As ever, Nico can do no wrong. Six courses, all excellent, with one or two up there with Manchester’s best. Voted the second-best of the Six By Nico menus by customers, Cooking Tokyo is a great introduction to the restaurant for newcomers, and for experienced hands, it’s a welcome reminder of why we love it so.