We’ve long been fans of Mary-Ellen McTague’s food, first at Aumbry in Prestwich and, in more recent years, the Creameries in Chorlton. So, inevitably, we were going to try her latest venture. The big question was how would the food and her style fit into the corporate atmosphere of being a city centre hotel restaurant (Tree House Hotel), serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well, unfortunately, not very well. The restaurant shares its space with the hotel bar and, whilst the room is pleasantly decorated and tables are nicely spaced apart, you would never be in any doubt this was a hotel restaurant. It lacks any of the ambiance you’d find in almost any same-sized independent restaurant. Service was fine. The evening wasn’t a complete disaster but I’ll let the food tell the story.
We started off with a couple of snacks. Cheese gougeres were fine. Tasty enough if a little dense in texture. Split pea chips were lovely – the best thing we ate. They’d cooked the split peas and allowed them to cool. Then they’d cut them into chip sized batons and deep fried them. They were like the perfect potato chip – crisp exterior with a fluffy tasty inside. And there’s a dollop of mushroom ketchup for dunking.
Mixed tomatoes from the Isle of Wight were bang on for seasonality. They’d been macerated so there was decent flavour. Also on the plate was yoghurt and crisped sourdough bread crumbs. It was an OK starter. The other starter featured smoked mackerel, although it was barely more than a large sliver of fish. There’s a dab of mushroom cream and another of rhubarb ketchup. Crisped rye bread crumbs are also the texture contrast here. It was a plate that could have been easily finished in three mouthfuls but I ate delicately to remain sociable.
Main courses were sort of similar to one another. One was a small cheese and onion tart. Nice thin pastry forming the shallow tart. It wasn’t filled with a set “custard” as you might get from a quiche, but rather with a very liquid and not very flavoursome cheese sauce. The onion came from a grilled spring onion draped across the top. It wasn’t very nice but, I suppose thankfully, there wasn’t much of it. The other main sounded lovely – a crab and lobster thermidor pie. The pastry was the same as the other dish, although in a deeper form. There’s a few bits of crab and lobster and more of the cheese sauce. To make it even wetter, there’s some lemon hollandaise on the plate. Both dishes came with what had been advertised as “grilled Gem lettuce”. Now, that can be a nice light accompaniment but they were served uncooked – so, basically, some undressed salad leaves. And there were chips. Now, these could have been really nice chips but there had been an extremely heavy hand with the salt. My wife couldn’t eat hers and I only ate mine as, otherwise, I was going home hungry.
We didn’t bother with dessert, so just finished with OK coffee – tasty enough but barely above lukewarm.
Sorry Mary-Ellen but you’re doing yourself no favours with this venture.
