The short menu at this unshowy restaurant means just one thing: we order the whole lot
Erst, 9 Murray Street, Ancoats, Manchester M4 6HS (0161 826 3008,
erst-mcr.co.uk). Plates £5-£12, wines from £20
A restaurant menu can be the sweetest kind of promise: we have these ingredients; we have ways to prepare them; what would you like? But they are not straightforward documents. Some menus get it so very wrong. There are those that quietly murder the English language. Things are “nestled” in “symphonies”; there are “trios” and “melanges” and “mosaics”, which make it sound less like dinner and more like an over-catered Roman orgy. Other menus fail by dint of being too long. Surely no kitchen can manage all these dishes, or be fluent in the culinary vernaculars of Mexico, Thailand, Korea, Goa and Dongbei?
