101-103 Oldham St, Manchester M4 1LW
VEGAN OPTIONS: Listed on menu
CUISINE: Japanese, Ramen, Bao.
ATMOSPHERE: Casual, drinks, late night spot.
PRICE: ££
It’s an early spring day in 2019 and I am sitting comfortably in a bar underneath a spotlight and a neon sign. The parts of my table that need to be well lit are well lit and the rest of the room is slick and dark. The window to my right reads in reverse COCKTAIL BEER RAMEN + BUN and the bar across from me reveals a well-stocked shelf of mescal with a person below it, at home, drinking a big German beer straight from the bottle.
The menu I was handed as I took my seat fits the mood. A cacophony of broadly Asian notes arranged to showcase the superstars of England’s swanky bar food scene: there’s Tofu Aioli, Padron (not Shishito) Peppers with Kimchi (not Kimuchi), Fried Chicken with Gochujang Mayo and Hispi in the vegan broth. The COCKTAIL BEER RAMEN + BUN food menu has everything you’d expect to be in a modern Asian restaurant and everything you’d expect to be in Northern Quarter bar happening simultaneously. On paper it doesn’t exactly seem like a practice of fusion but assemblage, of more is merrier, of you want it – we got it.
The vegan options are laid out very clearly on the menu. ‘Green Ramen’ (£11) is the solo big plate and the ingredients are listed comprehensively as green herb and chilli broth, hispi, tenderstem, padron, wakame, coriander, spring onion and mayu oil. There are add-in options for the broth of gochujang paste (50p) and miso paste (50p). The small plates section offers a few repurposed ingredients in Kimchi with Padron Peppers (£4.50) and Broccoli with Chilli Oil (£6) along with Leek + Musroom Gyoza (£5.50) and Edamame with Salt + Lemon (£3). These sideshow options seemingly aren’t designed to constitute a full meal for a vegan diner, so the Ramen is the star – exactly as it should be.
The kimchi and padron peppers sound intriguing but, in my book, unforgivable. It’s an interesting choice, placing two such nationally distinct flavours as Korean kimchi and Spanish padron peppers together on a menu in a Japanese Ramen Restaurant. Why not a riff on staple like kkwarigochu-jjim if you’re introducing a Korean dish with small green peppers? The menu is hip enough already and all of the ingredients for it are elsewhere on the menu. I overlook them and order the Green Ramen, Gyoza and a bottle of the big German beer. Service is attentive and friendly, everyone I speak to knows the menus well enough.
The dumplings come quickly, hot out of the kitchen, served in a ceramic dish doused with soy sauce. They are very good. The serving is a little bigger than expected and the salt content is balanced well enough not to overpower the charming leek and mushroom flavours. The dough is textured perfectly for the filling and there’s a good pile of pickled cabbage to smack away the heavy soy aftertaste ready for the next dish. The gyoza would make a great snack if you were just in the bar to booze your way through the comprehensive drinks menu.
The Green Ramen arrives as I’m about to finish my last dumping. It’s very pretty, but the impracticality of the sweetheart cabbage in the dish is immediately evident: this hispi, this absolute unit, is taking up virtually half of my bowl’s noodle stirring real estate. Worse, the cabbage is unseasoned and seared only on the cut sides. To combine the other ingredients in the broth I’m forced to tank down a hefty quarter of it – I didn’t need any of the pickled stuff in the last dish, consider my pallet cleansed.
The broth itself is mild, pleasant and fresh, but lacking in the deep, rich, umami flavours I’d typically expect to draw me into a bowl of ramen (if I come back I’ll spend the extra 50p on a shot of miso to fix this). The wakame, peppers and broccoli taste very clean. The quality of the ingredients is clearly high and the decision to include them as uncooked or barely cooked additions to the broth is probably made for this reason – sadly, there is just no contrast or respite from the watery green endlessness of the bowl. If the mayu oil had any presence in the dish it might be redeemed, black sesame oil and some more suitable seasoning would perhaps achieve the same thing. Disappointing.
COCKTAIL BEER RAMEN + BUN’s vegan food options are not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s hard to believe that some of the ingredients on the menu would have been included without putting a little too much weight into plating aesthetics and trending ingredients. Green Ramen quibbles aside, the bar is very cool and I’d be back to drink many of the big German beers and mescal on offer.
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/cbrb_mcr/
NEW VEGAN ORDER 