The apocryphal tale is that the Trafford Centre was going to be called the Dumplington Centre, as it’s in Dumplington. It’s a nicer name, if you ask me, and they could have had a family of cute cartoon dumplings as their mascots.
If the owners - a Canadian pension fund - ever decide to rebrand, they can have that, free of charge and with my blessing. But it was named the Trafford Centre instead, and that was that.
I don’t mind it, really. Some people talk about going to the Traff in the same tone they might reserve for a visit to the dentist or having something lanced.
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I think it’s fine. Go at the wrong time, and it’ll be packed and hot and frantic and unpleasant, but that’s sort of your fault, not theirs. When it’s quiet midweek, it’s fine. It has some decent shops, free parking, and as such absolutely serves its purpose.
But maybe most of all, I’ve always enjoyed its deluded grandeur. It’s demented. The marble, the statues, the columns and pillars, the insane chandelier hovering over the imperial staircase by Las Iguanas, which weighs over five tons and is apparently one of the biggest - if not the biggest - chandeliers in the world.
What on earth did they think they were building? A Roman temple? It’s an out-of-town shopping centre. Yes, you can buy a pair of shoes for several thousand pounds from Selfridge’s. You can also buy pile ointment from Boots. Wind it in.
As such, the newly opened El&n (pronounced ‘elan’, though El-and-n stands for ‘eat, live and nourish’, the company’s motto) fits right in here. Because what I was charged on a visit this week was as deluded as the surroundings.
It cost just shy of £70. For that, we were served two drinks, a dish of pasta, a chicken roll and some French toast. None of it was inedible. Some of it was fine. The cost - for what it was - was insulting.
El&n has branches in upscale London postcodes like Park Lane and Brompton Road, as well as a branch in Edinburgh, one at Heathrow and now in Manchester. There are also locations in Paris, Milan, Kuwait, Qatar, Dubai, and several in Saudi Arabia.
Manchester’s branch is in Trafford Palazzo, it should be noted (another ostentatious name), so not strictly speaking the Trafford Centre, a distinction only of relevance to the ‘stakeholders’ in either business. It used to be called Barton Square, but for most people it is all just the Trafford Centre, and this is ‘the bit over the bridge with Primark in it’.
El&n is pink. Very pink, and there are Instagram framing type spots where you can take pictures of yourself. An Archie’s will be moving in pretty much next door soon, also pink, so be mindful of mixing the two up.
Service is polite and efficient, and there seems to be about four or five managers on shift, all wearing very small suit jackets, distinguishing them starkly from the waiting staff, who wear pink t-shirts and pinnies.
There are no menus. You pick up the menu on a QR code, which loads up the website (if your 4G is working), which has the menu on, great for people who like their menus small and fiddly. You still order from the waiting staff, however. For nearly £70, I’d like them to push the boat out and have some menus printed.
El&n is basically an upscale concession. A concession with nice seating. Nice seating and neon slogans like ‘adventure awaits, but first… coffee’, ‘coffee is the new black’ and the baffling ‘lights, camera… coffee’, all of which seems a bit odd for somewhere that, while certainly does serve coffee, doesn’t seem any more serious about it than anywhere else.
There's no mention of where its coffee is coming from, the ethics, the farmers, the varieties, the roasting, the flavours, though you can have Arabic ghawa coffee with cardamom and some brownies if you hand over £25.
I order - from the ‘Instagrammable Drinks’ section of the menu - a Matcha Rose Iced Latte (£7.95). It’s a brave or possibly foolish combination, given that both matcha and rose are flavours that polarise. It’s undeniably pretty when it arrives, green on top, pink at the bottom, with dried petals floating in it.
In its Instagrammable state, it’s undrinkable - thin and unsweetened matcha on top, thick, sweet and unpleasant rose on the bottom. Mix them together in the hope of making it drinkable, and it’s not Instagrammable anymore, and looks like pond water. It’s simply not a pleasant drink.
A pistachio frappe comes too (£8.50). It’s great. Wildly sweet. Kids - ones who have been very, very good indeed - would love it.
The food arrives extraordinarily quickly. All of it at once, and easily less than 10 minutes after being ordered. It’s too quick for care to have been taken, and it’s busy today too. The kitchen is tiny, and it makes you wonder how much of this is pre-prepared. Should any of it be, considering the prices on the menu?
The spicy pulled chicken burger (£14) isn’t a burger, it’s a brioche roll with peri peri chicken in it, and not really pulled either, perhaps other than it being pulled from the chicken in the first place. So perhaps all chicken is pulled, when you think about it. This is drab and flavourless, and the baked sweet potato fries are burned. It’s a mean dish for the price, thoughtlessly presented. Just bun, fries, plate. Come on.
The large pasta shells in the truffle cacio e pepe (£18) are unseasoned (no salt in the water) and the sauce is split. It comes with an extra pot of sauce, which is also split. There are a few thick discs of truffle, but they don’t taste of truffle, one of the most pungent flavours known to man.
It’s not unpleasant, but for £18, there is a complete disconnect between what this dish costs and its value. Pasta experts Sud, in Ancoats, Altrincham and Sale, don’t serve a dish that is this expensive. The vast majority of pasta dishes at San Carlo cost less than this too.
The Lotus and Banana French Toast (£12.50) is two thick slabs of brioche covered in Lotus Biscoff sauce (though it tastes suspiciously more like peanut butter), fruit and icing sugar. It’s diabetes-inducing, but the best thing on the table.
El&n is also known for its cakes. At £8 a slice, it could not be justified and would have shoved the bill well over £80 for two people.
For any of this to feel even remotely acceptable, it would have to be done in a grand room, not the main thoroughfare of a shopping centre with Will Smith distantly welcoming me to Miami on the PA system. Some impressive surroundings like, say, Grand Pacific or The Refuge would certainly have cushioned the blow when the bill arrived. Not somewhere in full view of an escalator.
El&n, Ground Floor, The Trafford Palazzo Centre, Dumplington, Manchester M17 8AS
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