Nostalgia and food don’t always mix. I’m not sure who’s necessarily looking back with rose-tinted specs at the well-done steaks of the Berni Inn (with a glass of orange juice coming in as a ‘starter’), for example.
We’ve been mocked for hundreds of years for our crappy beige food, and for a long time it was pretty justified. Not now. So why wind the clock back when we’ve made such leaps and bounds in the right direction?
Enter Caff, an ‘old school butty shop’, that sprouted up at the none-more-Manc address of Tony Wilson Place at the end of last year. It’s less a shop than half a shipping container, branded up, painted sunshine yellow and turned into a kiosk.
Indulge in more of Ben Arnold's food writing covering Greater Manchester...
The barber and bistro bringing the food of the West Bank to Stalybridge
The Rolls-Royce of pies and the warmest welcome at the UK's best pub, just an hour from Manchester
- The £45.50 all-you-can-eat menu with a slightly stressful time limit
It’s the doing of the team behind Grub, the pioneering street food traders market on Red Bank, and harks back to times when white baps were filled with watery tomatoes, watery lettuce and watery pink ham, all things that - possibly for the better - took a hike when the panini turned up on the scene, all crispy and continental.
Did we lose something halcyon from our work day lunch when such dreary sandwiches got usurped by ciabatta? Or should we have said goodbye and good riddance to the ham salad barm when we had the chance?
Recently, Caff was named in the top 30 things in the UK currently ‘exciting’ the writers on the esteemed Observer Food Monthly. That such a humble butty cabin should make such an impression is notable, if a bit surprising given what's going on in the city right now.
It seems to be doing a lot right. They’re sourcing their ham, bacon and sausages from the highly respected Littlewoods Butcher in Heaton Chapel, and its soft white barms, Eccles cakes and pies - which apparently sell out daily - from Robinson’s bakery in Failsworth.
There were plenty either queuing up or milling around one lunchtime this week for it’s excellently priced £5 lunch deal, comprising a barm, a bag of Seabrooks (a prince among crisps) and a pop - the old school vibes here in earnest, with Irn Bru, cherryade and Vimto among the choices. You’ll get cheaper at Tesco and Sainsbury’s, but your sandwich will be fridge-cold, tragic and won’t be made right in front of you, as these are.
And you won’t be able to get a respectable ham ploughmans either. This one comes with a choice of pickle or piccalilli (the latter is chosen, obviously). The ham is slotted in in thick, generous folds, the barm is liberally buttered, the cheddar sliced in slabs, the piccalilli sharp, and there are rings of onion. The iceberg lettuce is crisp, the tomato predictably rubbish, but then the big ones always are. Mine is frisbeed into a bin.
But there’s something weirdly comforting about it being there in the first place. This isn’t trying to be trendy. There's no buggering about. It’s just a very, very good barm. Ditto the coronation chicken, a hugely generous splat of chicken, curry spices, sultanas and mayonnaise. There’s almost too much, and it spills out of the side, but no one is going to be complaining about that.
They do other stuff too, and its pleasingly old fashioned. A corned beef hash special, and a cheese and pickled onion barm the other week. Other barms (starting at a reasonable £3.60 without the deal) include a cheese savoury - grated cheese and onion mixed with salad cream - and there's a respectable range of vegan options too, including a tofu mayo, a ‘plantmans’ and a ‘vork pie’.
Surprisingly average was their sausage roll. It absolutely looked the part, deep Ronseal brown like David Dickenson after a fortnight at a Portuguese golfing resort on the outside, and what looked like a great filling through the middle. It was dry, under seasoned and disappointing.
The ‘roast dinner pie’ was also shrug-worthy, unfortunately. Good pastry, but not well enough seasoned inside. And yes, I get it’s a roast dinner pie, but this had sad carvery vibes. Also, I don’t want soggy overcooked broccoli either with my roast dinner, or in my pie. Perhaps others are better.
A salted caramel brownie from Lush was tucked away at speed, but an old fashioned coconut macaroon, complete with glace cherry on top, had a taste of cooking oil about it and wasn’t sweet enough.
We claim to be a nation of sandwich eaters. The average person in this country will eat 18,304 in their lifetime. Well over half of us eat a sandwich every single day, meaning that some people are having two.
Yet most are willing to accept some of the worst examples possible, the supermarkets being the principal culprits of churning them out with neither care or attention.
Americans do not especially claim to be a nation of sandwich eaters. Yet they have elevated the sandwich to a glorious artform. We’re catching up, though desperately slowly.
Fat Pat’s, down a manky alley in Chinatown, is the best. All others - Super Happy, Mira, Bada Bing - are of an equally excellent pedigree. Meanwhile, Michelin-tipped chef Adam Reid of The French tried an upscale butty thing at New Century, but binned it off after a couple of months.
Caff is perfectly good, and while it lacks the exhaustive processes of the above, the bells and the whistles, it’s doing its own thing and for that it should be applauded.
Places like this are becoming increasingly scarce. If I worked nearby, I’d be there most days.
Caff, Tony Wilson Pl, Manchester M15 4FN
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