Hard as it may be for the fanatical likes of me to believe, not everyone treats dinner as part of the obsessive search for culinary nirvana. Some people – lots of people – just like to get dressed up for a night on the town, where food is probably third on the list of considerations after fun with pals, friendly service and a menu full of crowd-pleasing greatest hits.
Each to their own, of course, but many places designed to fit this undemanding brief rely too heavily on lowest-common-denominator, mass-catering food, not giving a stuff about producers or provenance or seasonality – the stuff that gets us food spods in a froth. Reading the menu at this recent arrival to a corner of Altrincham that, following the rampaging success of the Market House, is rapidly becoming something of a foodie enclave, my expectations plummet into my socks. Here we go: sushi and sashimi nudging up against fish and chips, and steaks “dry aged in our Himalayan salt chamber”.
Do me a favour. Sushi for the laydees, I sniff, a sop to those of my fellow diners who look like escapees from The Real Housewives Of Cheshire. Bound to be grim. It’s not: the salmon and tuna nigiri, the tuna and mango (!) uramaki and dragon rolls are better than you’d get at Marks & Sparks or Yo! Sure, they’re not a patch on, say, the jewels served up by Jugemu, but not everyone has the patience to wait – and wait – for the exquisite output of a solitary, painstaking itamae.
From David Vanderhook, the chap behind The George Charles pub in Didsbury and Lime bar at Salford Quays, The Con Club is a looker, a head-turning bobby dazzler. Formerly (as the name suggests) the Working Men’s Conservative Club, dating from 1887, it has been reinvented as a huge, bustling canteen hung with dramatic lampshades in copper or a kind of beetle-wing iridescent ceramic. Walls are white-painted brick, the vaulted ceilings crisscrossed with industrial rafters. At the far end of the room, a frenetic open kitchen sits behind a dramatic lattice of dark wood, with a red Berkel meat slicer in pride of place.
Every dish that issues over the pass surprises by being a whole lot better than expected: arancini made with fine, al dente arborio rice fried with a lightness of touch and packed with woodsy, aromatic mushrooms. (I’ll forgive the show-offy slug of truffle oil.) Mussels, plump, grit-free and perky in quantities of cream, herbs and wine. If you’d asked me to bet good money on what kind of chips would accompany a fine chunk of sirloin trimmed like a New York strip, pink and juicy with the chew of good, grass-fed beef, I’d have punted straight away for the laziness of McCain or “stealth fries”, but these look and taste hand-cut. Peppercorn sauce, too, is prepared from scratch – not always a given when there are Colman’s and Knorr at a busy kitchen’s disposal.
Goosnargh duck breast is the evening’s star dish, blasted until crisp-skinned, tender and rosy inside, sliced across the grain and laid on a bed of boozy lentils, rubbly with roasted roots. Overall, the kitchen is hot on detail: the “pulled” duck that laces those tarragon-scented pulses; the crisp, buttery shortbread with perfect lemon posset, sour-sweet with macerated berries. The restaurant might be mobbed, every table turning with speed, but it happily swerves the old bish-bash-bosh, even though it could probably get away with it.
The Con Club is inclusive and huge fun. Staff seem to enjoy working here and pass their good humour on to row after row of boisterous diners of all ages. (Music reflects the demographic: Santana to Bob Marley to my most hated number of all time, The Piña Colada Song; basically Magic FM without the minicab.) It may not set the world on fire with Rorschach-blob-shaped plates, outré ingredients and tortured, tweezered food. There’s no big-name chef plastered over the door; it’s not killer or baller or banging or any other bloggy hyperbolic. Yes, there’s a “kids’ menu”.
But it’s decent. Thoroughly, totally decent, even if all you’re after is some coffee and cake or a pint of their own brew and “Serrano ham from the Berkel”. And, sometimes, that’s all you really, really want.
• The Con Club 48 Greenwood Street, Altrincham, Cheshire, 0161-696 6870. Open Tues-Sun, 11am-midnight (10am Sat & Sun; closes 11pm Sun). About £30 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service.
Food 6/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Value for money 7/10
