Linen, Manchester

Searching for a pre-Inception meal, we thought we’d finally try one of the many offers Linen continually promote. It’s a funny one, Linen. Hidden away at top of Manchester235 casino in the Great Northern development, you have to traipse up escalators, across gaudy carpets and past hardened gamblers to get to your meal. Once in the restaurant, the low brick arched ceilings, white tablecloths, lit up posts and baroque furnishings create a weird space, to be frank. Bit too footballers wives for my taste. It was an early Friday evening, and the room was dead, but in fairness it had picked up a bit by the time we left.

The staff were nice, though the formality felt a bit overdone as they served two diet cokes to us in the empty room. We had been reeled in by the two courses for £10 offer, which whatever way you look at it is extremely good value, and is especially so in a place like this where the kitchen obviously knows their stuff. The mains of sausage and mash and Goosnargh chicken were tasty and well-cooked, but the starter of mushroom pate was a bit flabby and tasteless, and although the chips were temptingly dark, ultimately they were soggy and disappointing.

So, we came away in two minds. Mr Noggin was enthusiastically in favour, and in many ways he’s right: the food is generally good and the price is hard to beat. I’d say the food quality was as good as Choice and a quarter of the price with the deals they have on.

But I just don’t feel any need to go back. It doesn’t excite me. It is missing a certain something that makes me love a restaurant, be it the extravagant décor and unusual flavours of Chaophraya, or the buzz and menu appeal of Piccolino’s. Yes, next time I think I’ll pop round the corner to Dimitri’s.

Bubble Cafe, Manchester

If you read food blogs from around the world, you can build up food envy for products and restaurants that aren’t available in the UK. For example I can only fantasise about Meyer lemons being made available in the UK as I read blog after blog singing their praises, and I peer at photos of exotic looking Vietnamese food, until recently unavailable in Manchester. But the latter has been rectified by the opening of the Bubble Café, above Red Chilli on Portland Street. It’s a casual, neatly decorated place with two long tables with stools if you want to eat in, although there was a brisk takeaway trade while we were there.

The menu is rather mysterious to a person with no knowledge of Vietnamese food, and I am no expert myself. The name of the café comes from the Bubble Tea they serve. This can come hot or cold, and is a tasty drink, either fruit or milk based, with the surprising addition of tapioca pearls in the bottom, black balls visible through the glass. The tea is served with a large straw, wide enough to suck up the pearls as you drink. The taste of the pearls is hard to pinpoint as the chewy, gummy texture is the most prominent sensation, and is rather enjoyable in a strange way! Mr Noggin had a banana milkshake he described as the best thing he’d ever tasted – I suspect it’s down to the Movenpick ice cream they stock.

There is a short food menu of around seven items, including salads and noodle soups. We ordered the prawn and Vietnamese ham spring rolls to start, and then the Bubble sandwich as a main.

The spring rolls were different but brilliant; huge, cold, wrapped in a paper thin casing and packed with juicy prawns, veg and noodles. They were perfect dipped in the accompanying hoi sin or fish sauce.

The sandwich I had read about in blogs as Bahn Mi, and is a baguette filled with pork, liver pate, and a pickled salad. The Bubble Sandwich was good, but had an overriding taste of salad cream, which was a bit of a shame as it drowned out the other flavours.

The whole meal came to around £16 for two, and you can currently get free frozen yoghurt after your meal if you mention Manchester Confidential. It’s a very cool little place with charming staff and I cannot recommend it enough.

PS. I have just had a scout around on Google and it appears my guesswork was a bit wrong – Bubble tea originated in Taiwan, and is common across a lot of Asia now, so not strictly Vietnamese as I thought.