Some have called it a curse, some labelled it a snub – however you described it, Manchester’s 40-year pursuit of a Michelin star finally ended this week. The city’s first entry into the red book since 1977 came via Mana, which opened less than a year ago under its chef-patron, Simon Martin.
Foodies eager to sample what Michelin inspectors describe as “exciting modern dishes with Nordic influences” will have to wait though – the restaurant is fully booked for the first three months of 2020. Mana has just nine tables, each with its own pendant lighting configuration, surrounded by huge glass windows and an open kitchen divided into sections by temperature.
On Wednesday morning, the team were busy painstakingly preparing the 15-18 dishes that would be served to that night’s 25 lucky guests who had booked before Monday’s Michelin announcement.
Although still reeling from the news, Warrington-born Martin, 29, is determined not to let the star become a distraction, and vowed to keep cooking for his guests, who he says are “the most important people in this building”. The minute you “start cooking for a guidebook, instead of customers, that’s it,” he says.
Martin scoffs at the idea that Michelin had unfairly overlooked Manchester in the past: “I’ve always said it’s ridiculous if anybody says there’s something against the city, that’s not how it works. It’s just … they hadn’t found a restaurant that meets their standards up until this point.”
Although Mana is nestled among cotton mills-turned-coffee shops in trendy Ancoats, described by Time Out as one of the world’s coolest neighbourhoods, Martin did not want to “appeal to people who just wanted to take selfies in the toilets… [but] people who are really into food.” He adds: “I don’t think the food is unapproachable, we’re not doing anything weird – no molecular gastronomy. It’s just natural food prepared with a bit of intelligence and respect.”
Passionate about sourcing the best-quality produce – all British, save for the kelp – Martin becomes animated when describing his drive to northern Scotland every few months to buy the monkfish livers that go into tarts served with “blackcurrant wood”. Commonly eaten in Japan, but discarded in the UK, Martin stops the fishermen throwing the heads back into the sea, loads them into his van on ice and drives them back to Manchester. “I was doing 35 [mph] in a 30 [mph zone] on the way back once and a copper pulled me over for speeding – but he let me go because of the smell.”
Martin trained at Noma in 2016, before returning after two years to Manchester to be with his girlfriend, a nurse at a local hospital. He draws his influences widely, praising the focus he observed in Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen and saying he visited Japan earlier in the year on a fact-finding mission, but he says working under Noma’s René Redzepi made him “look at food very differently”.
He wants to set the record straight about reports of him being homeless while training in Copenhagen though: “Look, I wasn’t smoking spice on the street.” He says he was offered a job on the last day of a three-month unpaid internship but hadn’t made any accommodation arrangements.
“It’s hard to find a place to live and I didn’t really want to say to them that I couldn’t start straight away.” So he slept on the streets after shifts for a few weeks in late summer, but is at pains to point out that he showered at Noma and was very well fed.
What does Mana’s success mean for the city’s food scene? The Mancunian food critic Louise Rhind-Tutt has high hopes. “A star attracts footfall, tourism and investment, all vital to a city like Manchester, but it also shapes lives and careers,” she said.
Thom Hetherington, the chief executive of Northern Restaurant and Bar, the annual Manchester-based trade show, agrees: “The star is a justified and deserved accolade for Mana, but in terms of what it does for Manchester, it’s about the profile and the audience that it will bring, who won’t just eat at Mana - it will have a greater impact on the city.”
Although Hetherington says he feels pride, he knows that not everybody feels the same about the honour. “There’s a lot of people who feel that we don’t need Michelin to tell us that we’ve got great restaurants.” He says the feeling of being passed over has rankled for fans of acclaimed spots such as The French, Exaneta at Tast, Restaurant MCR and Stockport’s Where The Light Gets In. “All these restaurants that are absolutely at the level where Michelin seems to award stars at, yet for whatever reason they’ve been snubbed, which I think has hardened the general Mancunian feeling that ‘we don’t care [about Michelin]’.”
Martin is aiming for a second Michelin star in the future, but for the moment he’s happy to concentrate on branching into opening for lunches mid-week. He hopes the star will boost other local businesses, but is mainly excited that it will attract hard-to-find special produce. “Hopefully, suppliers will be contacting us now.”
