Michael Caines at ABode Manchester

Tass Patsalides (14 August 2008)

I visited this place yesterday evening for dinner with two colleagues; we had gone up to Manchester for business and were looking forward to our meal in the evening. First impressions were good; nice decor with some very good black and white photography adorning the walls, downstairs was a bit more of a nightclub crossed with restaurant and didn't really feel right. There was a smattering of diners and no real atmosphere but it was a Wednesday night so I guess that is normal?

We had to choose from grazing, a la carte or tasting menu. We all agreed that the tasting was pretty uninspired as was the a la carte so went grazing, we all chose three dishes and wanted to share stuff but this is the real problem with grazing dishes as they are not really designed to do this so it defeats the objective. I don't necessarily want my plate piled high but I have to say that the portions were quite small albeit that the food tasted very good. A bit of a disaster with the cheese course as there didn't seem to be any explanation for the grazing cheese versus the a la carte. We were told that a la carte was bigger and at £12 we thought would be ample. We received three tiny cubes of anaemic cheese from a choice of around five varieties. When we complained we were told that they try to support local makers. Here's a tip, don't get a cheese cart loaded to the gills with French, Spanish and Italian with some really good English cheese and let customers choose what they want. Oh and they brought our desserts out with the cheese and then forgot the dessert wine.