Obsidian

I make that 18 punters in three days, of whom only Nicholas and David are boys. Would you really expect me to climb over a Phaik, a MadMel, a Grainne or a Samira to get to them? It just wouldn’t be honest.

In the past, as far as I recall, I have “done” only two male readers, 93-year-old Aslan Hamwee (now 95 and still fit as a fiddle), with whom I ate Syrian-Lebanese in Manchester, and Ron Olsen who joined me for a very average lunch at Baltic in Gateshead. And then about 15 women. This ratio has infuriated some of you (who have seen nothing but lecherousness and prejudice in my selections) but, as you can see from the sample above, it is nothing but proportional representation.

Still, I thought I’d do a man this week, anyway. So I trawled the back catalogue for a suitable date. Not easy. A good man is so hard to find, isn’t he, girls? (You don’t mind me calling you “girls”? Since you make up 89.9 per cent of my active readership I would hate to offend you.) Also, I wanted to go North, because it’s been a while, and I had to be there and back in a day, so it had to be close to a mainline station. I happened upon the following:

“Dear Giles, The newly opened Obsidian restaurant in Manchester received a stunning review in our local magazine, City Life. Worth a try? Regards Graham Simpson.” Not an especially tricksy e-mail. That’s not how I work. Right place, right time. Graham, you’re on.

I took the 10am from St Pancras, snoozed as far as the Peak District and then allowed myself to be awed by the loveliness of the countryside and the lowering, Dickensian spookiness of the giant disused mill that cowers beneath you as you emerge from the New Mills tunnel. At least, I assume it’s a mill. We Londoners wouldn’t know a mill if it banged us on the head at midnight and stole our mobile phone.

Strolling from Piccadilly down Portland and Princess Street to the restaurant, I marvelled at the preponderance of cocktail bars offering nine-shot slammers for a pound. What is it with the North of England and cocktails? Newcastle claims to have more cocktail bars than any other city in Europe, a bar in Huddersfield serves a £360 cocktail it claims is the most expensive in Britain (like it’s a good thing) and London Mancs are always going on about the “banging cocktail scene” back home. Why can’t they just grow up, have a glass of wine and relax?

On Princess Street I ducked into Obsidian, in the basement of the new Arora hotel in a converted cotton warehouse, just behind a posse of office drones in last year’s suits, attracted, no doubt, by the bar’s “award-winning mixologist, Jamie Stephenson”. Sorry, I do not mean to sniff at cocktail-making qualifications - I dare say they are considerably harder to achieve these days than a Physics A level.

Expecting one of those TV-stereotype Mancs with the Terry Christian pout, food-blender accent and frenetic gait, hobbling like Quasimodo under a gigantic chip about London, I was pleasantly surprised by Mr Simpson, a quiet fellow in a short-sleeved, bright-green shirt who had already inhaled a vintage vodka at the bar “because I’d never had one before” and a glass of champagne “because I’m addicted to it”.

It is one of the few alcohols he drinks, though, because he is a whopping bloody great vegetarian of the kind that does not eat potatoes if they’ve been in a field that was ever used for growing grass that might have been fed to cattle. As I sat down he thrust into my hand a Vegetarian Society pamphlet explaining that Campari contains cochineal, which is made from insects, and that most ciders, wines and cask ales use fining agents that include isinglass, which is derived from the swim bladders of the Chinese sturgeon. This is great news, of course, if you have been feeling a bit guilty about eating caviar, because once the fish are being killed already to make beer you might as well eat their eggs. (By the way, if you thought I was hyperbolising about the potatoes, I’d like to quote from the Veg Soc Pamphlet: “most spirits are acceptable… (but) some Spanish brandies have been conditioned in casks which had previously held sherry which may have been treated with animal-derived finings.”)

Graham glanced at the menu and said: “Oh no! They serve foie gras, I should walk out now!” But he didn’t, I suppose, because it would have been a bit rude when I’d come all this way. They saved the day by reeling off a handful of vegetarian options from which he chose a deep-fried (free-range) egg on spinach with wild mushrooms in a cream sauce that we both found quite punitively salty (though the dish was beautifully presented), followed by a char-grilled vegetable kebab served on a bed of more vegetables, that a donkey would have described as “al dente”. Graham chowed manfully through it, though, fidgeting on his big, yellow, leather chair as if, with its proximity to dead cow, his arse was undoing all the good work his mouth was engaged in. There is a lot of leather in Obsidian, Graham pointed out: big, quilted eau-de-nil booths, slinky armchairs, sleek black bar stools. It looks like a sort of Fritz Lang cyber-dungeon-cum-Conran Shop.

I had Joselito ham at £15 the portion, which was nearly as good as Joselito always is but lacked a certain tacky fattiness for no reason I can explain. I also had a respectable pea and locally cured ham soup, full-bodied and intriguingly pea-y, and some sea bass that was served limp and almost stone-cold on cold mash with an irrelevant balsamic reduction. We finished with a Manchester Tart - a faithful reproduction of a traditional, lumbering bakewelly thing, of note only for its fnarr-fnarr moniker. Not a bad place, all in all, though a bit ham-fisted and ordinary. I am afraid it would sink without trace in London - if only because of the pube on the tablecloth when we sat down. To be honest, girls, you didn’t miss much.

Food: 5

Service: 6

Bar: 7

Score: 6

Price: £50 each including cocktails

Yang Sing

34 Princess Street, Manchester (0161-236 9438)

I walked past this famous - and apparently excellent - Chinese restaurant to get to Obsidian four doors down. I won’t make the same mistake twice.

The Junction Tavern

101 Fortess Road, NW5 (020-7485 9400)

A fortnight ago I failed to mention The Junction in a sentence about Kentish Town pubs, which caused the management to throw a hissy fit at me while I was eating lunch. But just because I won’t be going there again for a while (which is a pity because I like the garden and the staff) it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.