Michael Caines Restaurant

For a Christmas treat my wife and I tried the tasting menu at the Abode along with the paired wines (£95pp).
We were welcomed by staff who, throughout the evening, were pleasant and well-​trained. The restaurant and bar area was discretely decorated for Christmas but did seem a bit dim, maybe swap the 40W bulbs for 60’s?
We started with a glass of the Michael Caines champagne and a cocktail. Both were of excellent quality.
Moving to the restaurant we took our places at the table. We were served bread that was fantastic, and were brought the first of our wine pairings. A special note must go to the sommelier, who was the highlight of the entire meal — charming, knowledgeable and attentive. Our first course was «Ox tongue, heritage carrots and horseradish ice cream», all things I like. Overall this was a great set of flavours but I found the tongue was sliced so thinly that it pretty much disintegrated when being put on the fork so there was a great taste but overall the dish needed a tad more texture. It could have also done with one more slice of the tongue as there was too much garnish for the main event.
Next up was «Confit salmon, apple & lemon thyme» this was by far the best course of the evening and the paired Gavi was a great match. This was a fantastic dish and I’m already Googling recipes in order to try to make something similar at home! I would happily order this over and over again.
«Wild stone bass, cauliflower, lemon thyme, cumin veloute» was our third course, beautifully cooked fish with proper crispy skin. My other/​better half doesn’t agree with me about the delights of crispy fish skin but as this was so well executed, I didn’t get her portion that I was angling for.
I’m going to take a break from the food now, which unfortunately is what the kitchen seemed to be doing in between courses. The pacing of a meal can make or break it and there were breaks in between courses that were just too long. It’s difficult to get this right when the menu is 6 courses long, especially when you’re also serving up a la carte diners. If you’re going for the full on onslaught of, say, 21 courses at L’Enclume, the courses (albeit often just a mouthful) arrive with a careful choreography to enhance your meal, so you’re neither over faced or sitting and waiting. If you’re eating a «standard» 3 course meal a bit of a break between courses is often welcome. We both found that the spacing between our courses was neither one of these or the other. It was also at these points that the waiting on staff did seem to become conspicuous by their absence. I would point out that the restaurant was not full so an over-​stretched kitchen could not be an excuse, and when people are paying nigh on £100 for a meal it shouldn’t be anyway.
The next dish was «Pork fillet, butternut squash, boulangere potato, smoked paprika jus» I was delighted to see this arrived with kale, which is definitely in my top 3 «green things that I used to hate but now love». The pork itself was perfectly cooked, sadly the rest of the dish didn’t live up to the quality of the star performer. The kale was undercooked, not al dente or «still crisp & crunchy» but near as dammit raw, a huge let down. The boulangere potato lacked the layers necessary for the dish to work, it was basically a slice of crispy bacon topped with a couple of thin slices of potato. It was tasty enough but I feel that the kitchen really missed a trick by skimping on a very small amount of spud to give the dish the layers and texture variation it needs. This was also the only dish where the wine match didn’t work, by itself it was pleasant enough but was completely wrong for the food.
These were followed by «Apple & wasabi sorbet, first press olive oil» and «Chocolate orange confit mousse, confit orange sorbet, dark chocolate ice cream» both of which were well executed and did a good job in bringing the meal back around after the let down of the pork dish.
Another round of drinks and we were done. The bill coming to £280, including service, water & two rounds of drinks. So overall what did I/​we think? The repetition of ingredients & techniques in a menu is a difficult thing for a kitchen to master. Done correctly you are pleasantly reminded of earlier courses, done with a heavy hand and it can seem lazy or unimaginative. The menu featured 3 mentions of confit, lemon thyme on two consecutive courses, a horseradish ice cream and a wasabi sorbet and apple twice — both times with oil. Fortunately these are all flavours I like but I do feel that over 6 courses on a «tasting» menu that a little more variation would have been welcome.

Fantastic. This restaurant could be a great value place to eat with the lunchtime menu being amazing for what you get. I went a la carte so was a little more to pay at the end.
Relaxed service delivered a wonderful scallops starter with crispy pork belly and various jus etc. really good balance of flavour and a very knowledgable sommelier to pair the wines off if you need a tip or two. Main was more pork with purses of squash, flash fried cabbage and lardons, great interplay of taste and texture and just enough portion to leave you wanting a little more but easily satisfied with coffee and petit fours.
Love the setting, could be a bit overdone these days to use the basement with exposed structure and so on but the setting feels fresh and intimate, cosy and classy. I was expecting to enjoy it but it was just a little bit special…

My fair mama and brother came into town for mama’s birthday last week and, lo and behold, at the age of 21 it was my turn to organise her birthday shenangians. Faced with a reem of online offers and vouchers, I decided against the cheapskate within me and set my sights on Michael Caines; having been before myself and dined on the Amazing Graze lunchtime offering I felt it was completely apt to show off my birthday planning skills and expensive taste!
The restauraunt itself feels pretty swanky, with draping around a few booths and velvet covered cushions on the benched seating. Our welcome was lovely and friendly as we were taken downstairs by one of the front of house staff members, our coats were taken and we were offered a seat at the bar before partaking in our meal. We had already planned to take up the Amazing Graze with matching wines so declined, but it was nice for there to be options aside from sit down and eat. We quickly got the giggles on account of the whisper-​quiet service but, as we are common folk, it didn’t really matter if we couldn’t hear all about the tanins in the wine, though I do appreciate the effort put in by all the staff — there are alot of ingredients and facts to remember, so maybe they whisper in case they get something wrong?
The menu was delightful and we all quickly decided on what to eat; for me it was duck ravioli, beef, and dark and milk chocolate pave. The duck was very tasty, as were the honey roasted parsnips it was sat upon, and the beef was juicy and perfectly pink. I didn’t care much for the onion confit but you take risks when eating gastronomic delights such as these and I was happy to leave it to one side. The dessert was delicious, rich and tangy with citrus flavours, matching perfectly with the sweet dessert wine which I personally found undrinkable without food.
Everything went perfectly together and the lunch was an overall success; yes the servings are small but they are plenty filling, leaving us well contented and energised for an afternoon of shopping and flat viewings. Don’t head here if you want something hearty, try the upstairs MC Bar & Grill which offers bigger portions with equal flavour, but if you’re after something elegant and a real treat with a wow factor, this is the place to go.

I’ll be honest, I did wonder when we took up the lunchtime offer here whether there’d be a chef who shouted, ‘You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off,’ in Cockney twang. But that’s Michael Caine. Michael Caines, however, is an award-​winning Michelin-​starred chef who is reportedly innovative and brilliant. Myself and some old workmates thought this was a good opportunity to try some very posh nosh, so over to Piccadilly we headed to take advantage of what Manchester Confidential informed us of.
Remember that episode of Friends, when Monica and Phoebe were arguing because Phoebe was busking outside Monica’s restaurant, and they had that your-​music-​is-​crappy vs. your-​food-​is-​crappy fight? And Phoebe makes fun of the restaurant’s teeny-​tiny portions and says, ‘I ordered the smoked salmon appetiser, but… I can’t see it! I can’t SEE it!’ Well, the food at Michael Caines is difficult to see too. I’d never tried all this mini-​portion business before, and mebbeh am reet common as muck like, but my tuna Carpaccio starter was indeed a few clingfilm-​thin raw tuna slices with some herbs. Now I’m a slow eater, perhaps the slowest you’ll ever meet, but this I could have just popped in my mouth in one go. I didn’t, to try not to be rude. I sliced it. SLICED something the size of a matchbook. On the other hand it did taste very nice.
I went for the salmon as my main, which physically appeared as an eighth of a regular salmon steak you’d have anywhere else… yes it was delicious, cooked to perfection, but I would have liked it to have lasted longer. And the rice pudding dessert came in an eggcup. Again, just a couple of spoonfuls, but it was mighty tepid. It was like it didn’t know if it wanted to be hot or cold. ‘Normally there’s many more of us,’ the grains in the rice pudding seemed to say. ‘We need a majority vote. When we’re in a bowl, temperature decisions are easier to make.‘
Surprisingly though, when we were done, while I didn’t feel overly full I certainly felt satisfied. I wasn’t sure if it was my stomach fooling itself into thinking it was, what with it being post-​lunchtime now, or whether I was indeed proof of the theory that rich flavours fill you up more, no matter the portion size. Food richness FTW perhaps? I just can’t get away from the feeling that tiny portions are akin to baby food. Especially the tepid rice pudding… And £20 for baby food, or haute cuisine if you want to call it that, still feels a little extortionate for a lunchtime offer for me. Mebbeh al ‘ave to try it again when am feelin mower posh like.

I went for the Amazing Grazing lunch menu with matched wine and have got to say that everything was perfect. The three courses weren’t large, but they’re not meant to be as it’s only lunch (although i did have three glasses of wine).
I’ll be going back soon.

nice location, good food!!! owesome :-)

Still the best-​value fine dining in the city, with a few very palatable tweaks to their ‘amazing grazing’ menu: before, you could order a 2 or 3 courses, strictly, a starter, a main and a dessert, from their selection for £13 or £15. but now they have offered to extend it to 3 or 4 or 5, with no dictates on whether you should order a dessert or a starter. Essentially you have freedom to dine as you like. Pairing a wine for each dish for an additional £2 is usually spot-​on.
As for the food itself — I heartily recommend their soups, fish and desserts. Each time I’ve been there these have always been perfect.

Michelin starred chefs make Michelin starred food. And Michelin starred food comes in one of two forms. Very small or very expensive. this is the choice you have at Abode.
The a la carte menu costs £20 per main. The grazing menu gives you very small dishes. Believe it or not this isn’t a problem in my book. If you can afford it or are celebrating something very special, have the main menu. If not, the grazing menu offers you a flavour of the delights available. The food is of such a quality here that in my view size doesn’t matter, it is a delight to have experienced it at all. Also, gourmet food is often very rich. I had the ‘Amazing Graze’ deal, a three mini-​course menu for £12, and though I ate less than a course of normal food in all, I was full and had spent a very enjoyable 2 hours with friends.
This is haute cuisine, top stuff, gourmet, Michelin standard. Whatever you want to call it. That means it comes with all the things you’d expect. If that’s a big problem for you, then Abode is a very large waste of money. But if you’re like me, it’s worth it to remind yourself of how good food can be. This restaurant is literally so much better than any of the dozens of others I’ve tried in Manchester that they aren’t comparable. And for me, that’s worth the money any day.

Now this is something I find difficult to get behind: gourmet dining. I understand that you get fantastic flavours and rich textures and all that old bollocks, but I don’t understand why that means the portions have to be so goddamn tiny! What’s wrong with rich flavours and sizeable portions? Maybe Michelin standard chefs are all exceptionally talented but also incredibly lazy, and making more than a mouthful of any given meal gives them hives and sends them into a strop. Whatever the reason, Michael Caines abides to this unwritten rule by making delicious dishes at high prices and small sizes.
Call me old-​fashioned, but one of the main things I go to a restaurant for is to eat, and if I don’t feel like I’m doing that I’m not inclined to rate it very highly. As nice as the food may be, I’d like to actually feel that I had something and that it wasn’t all just a gastotastic daydream.

Just had the two courses for £25 offer and very impressed. Great service. Good atmosphere (a bit clubby background music though). Food was just enough to please but not over fill. The quality of the food though was excellent.

When I was skinted and jobless I temped for a dining club, calling restaurants in Kent and Surrey to try and get them to give our members free stuff for… no benefits at all. It was a flawed model, but my natural sales techniques (call them, call them, call them, email them, call them again, never stop) meant I actually did quite well, though I hated myself. Anyway, in my research for this role I came across the name Michael Caines, the double Michelin-​starred head chef of Gidleigh Park who, I was shocked to find out, had lost an arm BEFORE collecting this accolade. I thought ‘bloody hell, bloody hell! He went through all that, overcame such a horrendous injury and STILL got two Michelin stars? The man must be amazing!’ Me, I can’t even do cheese on toast if I’ve recently stubbed a toe. So, you can imagine my excitement when further research uncovered his eaterie at Abode.
And I was right to be excited. The A la Carte at Michael Caines is really something. But be prepared to spend, friend. A starter will set you back £12-£15, and a main £19-£24. They are delicious, though, and the portions on the A la Carte are decent (though judging from Emma-Louise’s review, this isn’t the same at lunch). I’d recommend the saddle of venison (£23), it’s served with a lovely jasmine tea sauce that really complements the gamey flavour of the meat. Desserts aren’t really my thing, but the passionfruit soufflé was nice. The cheese board is great, with a selection of tasty British cheeses, crackers and chutney. Desserts are £8.50, cheese £11.50.
Now, if you’re thinking «waitasecond, I’m not in the position to pay £23 for a lump of venison!» but you still want a tasty, luxuriant treat, never fear. There’s an early dining set menu for £14.95 for 2 courses and £19.95 for 3, 6−7pm Mon-​Fri. The set menu is fairly narrow, expect 3 options per course, but the portions are good and the set-​menu changes regularly, should you fancy a repeat visit.
The décor and atmosphere are sumptuous, with very forgiving lighting. If you’re lucky you might be seated in one of the intimate booths, but all the seating options are decent, and the general surroundings make you forget that you’re on Station Approach. The bar area is very comfortable, and I’d recommend arriving a little earlier than your booking, so you can have a G&T in the bar.
The wine list is impressive, and handily organised by grape types. Expect to pay around £25 for a decent bottle, though there are pricier bottles if you;re in the sepndy mood. We had a delicious Fairview pinotage (£27), which we chose because we’d actually visited the Fairview vineyard in South Africa. There’s a great balance between old and new world wines here, so there’s something for everyone. They also have a decent by-​the-​glass selection.
Abode is a great choice if you fancy pushing the boat out and enjoying a bit of posh nosh in a nice setting, and the early dining menu means you can enjoy it on a budget. All in all, a great restaruant with very well-​executed food.

Atmospherically set in the basement of plush hotel Abode, Michael Caines is fast building a reputation for itself as one of Manchester’s finest eateries, winning the Pride of Manchester Award for best restaurant earlier this year.
Serving an exciting mix of modern European dishes, with a wine list that has obviously been agonised over the restaurant has obviously made good use of the consultation role played by the double Michelin starred chef after whom it is named.
Though beautifully finished in an expert mix of raw materials and fine fabrics and given added drama by a tasteful lighting arrangement, Michael Caines is not overly formal and the staff go to the ends of the earth to see to it that you are comfortable ad well looked after.
My tip if it’s your first time to make use of the innovative grazing menu which allows you to sample lots of dishes from the a la carte menu in smaller portions.

This is probably the best fine dining in Manchester, which means the £12 set lunch is the best bargain when it comes to food in Manchester.
There’s the lunch menu, a grazing menu of small portions and an a la carte menu which largely duplicates the grazing menu, but in larger portions and roughly double the price.
The grazing concept, plus the excellent execution and presentation, makes this a foodie paradise.
The staff are excellent and thoroughly helpful too.
There’s a good wine list, and the staff are happy to recommend some excellently matched wines by the glass.
Top notch in every regard.
Except maybe the toilets. They’re spotless, but apparently designed for people under 10 stone.
By the way, the restaurant is downstairs in the basement. I think lobstermadbody must have gone to the ground floor café, though that doesn’t excuse the treatment he seems to have received.

Well, i was staying across the road at the Malmaison, happy that i could nip across the road for lunch. So i did. i don’t normally go in for big lunches but i had a stag do to attend in Manchester that night and felt like treating myself as well as lining my stomach. I have eaten superb lunches and dinners at Abode in Exeter and utterly sublime food Gidleigh Park so my hopes were high. I looked at the menu on the outside. I walked in to a terrible smell of deep fried breakfast. Presumably the hotel guests have their breakfasts there. Surprised, i spoke to the lone barman standing there. Is this really the only lunch menu available An apalling selection of what seemed to be a brunch menu of paninis and the like stared back at me. Yes sir. And do you really only have a single beer on draught? Yes sir.
I can not beleive that what the idiot barman said was true, but as there was no-​one else to turn to i walked out.

After buying gift vouchers as a present for my boyfriend (not purely a selfish act — he wanted to go too!) we finally got around to visiting Abode this week for dinner.
It was busy, and even though we booked a couple of weeks in advance, we could only get a table at 9:30pm. But that was no problem — it just left us more time for cocktails. And very pleasant cocktails they were too — the subtle but very tasty ‘Bramble’ comes highly recommended.
The surroundings are nice and simple — the lighting is low (but not so low you can’t see your food), although I’m not too sure about the rock star pictures on the wall.
The food is split into three menus. Apparently, this is to ‘break down the formal dining experience’ (this is what the waiters told us anyway), although it all felt pretty formal to me. There’s a ‘grazing’ menu, with smaller portions of the a la carte menu, so you can have a couple of different dishes to taste for yourself or to share amongst the party. Then obviously the a la carte, and finally, the ‘tasting’ menu with matching wines recommended for each course. We opted for the grazing menu, and I enjoyed a small starter of cod cheeks with belly pork and two mains — steak with dauphinoise potato, stir fried vegetables, and a sherry cream sauce, and lamb with roasted baby onions, and a black olive beignet. The food was extremely tasty and all dishes were beautifully presented. Obviously, being a grazing menu, the portions weren’t huge, but the size for the starter was really big enough considering the richness of the two mains. In fact all of the food we sampled was very rich, and sort of crept up on us as we ate our desserts. We ordered the unusual sounding hot chocolate fondant (no, that’s not the unusual bit) with a red pepper and white chocolate ice cream cannelloni (there you go). Now, those of you who might have read any of my other reviews will know how I like my desserts. The fondant was lovely. Really really lovely. The white chocolate ice cream, had it been made into a ball and served on the side would have been lovely. But the red pepper? What was that doing on the plate? Both taste and texture were just a bit wrong. We tried it and it failed us. Not only that but there appeared to be a blob of red pepper coulis alongside, adding further insult to injury. So all in all the dessert was a bit disappointing.
Other than that, the service was generally good, although confusingly almost entirely French — I felt like I was on holiday when really I’d caught the bus into town. It’s the kind of place where you would really only go to celebrate something, as it is very very expensive. Although I gather their lunch menu is only £12 at the moment, so maybe I’ll try that next time. And then go for cake at Oklahoma.

Best fine dining restaurant in Manchester, this is a place for dinner and the kind of place you take your wife to make up to her after she caught you getting a blow job off one of the bin men when you told her you’d been out to but the early copy of The Financial Times.
I actually thought that the bill was pretty good to say we had cocktails and the full dinner and would definitely go back. Service was friendly and the tables were full but plenty of room. They deserve a Michelin star, Michael Caines trained with Raymond Blanc and this really shows.

MC Café bar is situated in Piccadilly below. It’s a great setting for meeting friends and family, the staff are polite and the food is really good. However while the food is excellent it isn’t the best priced restaurant in the city, we ordered from the special offer lunch menu and thought we’d get a bargain at 2 courses for £9.95 until we found that the portions were quite small and a couple of side dishes at £3 each were needed. Also, apart from Michael Caines other restaurant in Abode, this is the only restaurant I know in town that adds an 11% service charge to the bill, 10% is bad enough but wheres this extra 1% go? These are just considerations for the restaurant managers, but I don’t think it would stop me going back or telling others about this very nice restaurant.

Just what Manchester needs, another downmarket sleezy coffee joint.

I thought this place would be just another attempt at an american gimmick. I decided to give it a go last Monday and have been back for my lunch every day this week — the food is to die for and the prices are GREAT! This place is definately not a greasy spoon — I’d recommend it to everyone

I recently had the pleasure of lunch at the new Michael Caine restaurant at the Abode hotel in Manchester. The restaurant looks beautiful with attention to detail even down to the place-​settings (slate slabs). Staff are impeccably dressed, and understand the menu well.
The menu itself has a wide selection of dishes, varying in tastes, but all delivered with the technical excellence one would expect from a Caine restaurant. Wine list is excellent as are the cocktails, and even the breads are baked fresh and served direct to you. Quality of the food was (as expected) superb, and finished with a quirky desert selection.
My only criticism was that the atmosphere was rather quiet, but this is a new venue for Manchester and it will take a fair while to build a good regular crowd.
A must try!