Confessions of a Wino

A posthumous restaurant review.  Is this a joke?

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You may remember I visited Linen, in the lofty part of the posh casino for my last birthday.  The other restaurant at Manchester 235 is Italian, on the ground floor next to the entrance and has the advantage of not having to be a member of the casino to enter and eat.

Numéro is an odd layout, with a bar in the middle and a simple opaque glass screen separating diners from the gaming tables.  The service is efficient and pleasant and the food is decent.  But if you do intend to go to the casino afterwards, I would recommend booking for Linen.

Linen, you see, is already the other side of painful casino security, and at meal finishing time on a Saturday there is a big queue.  Secondly, the atmosphere is classier, the prices similar, there is live music, the wine list is better and perhaps most importantly, you are more likely to get your wine served at the right temperature in Linen.

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The somewhat entertaining, but supercilious and frequently AWOL Sunday Times restaurant critic, AA Gill, rarely extends his gastronomic tentacles beyond central London.  So I was surprised to see that he had, according to a poster at Piccadilly rail station, nominated San Carlo in MANCHESTER as the best Italian restaurant outside the capital.  Surprised not only because he had ventured so far north as to get the apocryphal nosebleed, but also because San Carlo is far from the best resto of any type anywhere.

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“Put a Yorkshireman in charge of an Italian restaurant???” I said.  “Next, you will be telling me a Swede is being appointed as England Football coach!”

So it came to pass that my predictions for the year 2001 were (as ever) way off the mark, since Martin Pickles bought the Flying Pizza in Leeds and……….well let’s not discuss the other appointment.

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