DAMSON, October 2009

I am crazy about restaurants.  Other people go to concerts or museums, imbibing the same effect, no doubt . . .  but I love to eat and drink and talk.  I went north, on my last trip to England with no other purpose than to have a meal at Damson, and I feel as though I have been to the Louvre.  Truly, I have seen something very extraordinary.

Cooking is the most evanescent of art forms.  Someone eats it (which is the whole point) and it is gone. Preparing artful food  is very tricky, as well, because a chef can never produce exactly the same thing on the plate.  Weather, ingredients, the mood of the sous-chef at the time, difference in the quality of the produce or meat which the supplier brings—all of these are variables in the equation.  And no matter how much a chef wants to create a certain sort of cuisine, he or she is always affected by the surroundings:  the front of the house (décor, wait staff, quality of diners), and geography.  Damson, you see, is a neighbourhood restaurant, located in Heaton Moor (which is a suburb of Manchester).  It looks so very unpretentious that you would miss it, driving by on the road, as it is sits next to a video rental store, with a fish and chip shop a couple of doors down.  And it is so very friendly, when you walk inside the door, that you would feel that anybody would be welcome, and nobody would be intimidated to come inside, assuming that they wanted to pay the very, very modest price of 15 pounds for a three-course menu.

I'm American (though now I live in Holland), and I find this inclusiveness enchanting—and absolutely right.  You can order, at Damson, a lavishly glamourous dish such as steak with snails and bordelaise sauce, or a starter of pigeon breast . . . or something cheerful that comes with chips.  It just depends what you are in the mood to have, that evening.

I wanted to dine there myself because I would go to very great lengths to have a really sensational meal, and because this whole restaurant venture comes under the heading of:  'To be continued..... ' That is, it was continued from the immortal Sam's Chop House, smack in the center of Manchester.  Sam's (under the orchestration of maestro Steve Pilling) was filled with Men in Suits having business lunches, and it looked absolutely Victorian, or as though you were on a film set for a BBC historical drama.  It had wood paneling and lighting that looked vaguely reminiscent of gas lamps, and the utterly seductive Table 13 (dubbed, by certain members of the real estate fraternity 'The Naughty Boys' Table'), a virtually hidden spot all on its own with two banquettes and a bookshelf at one end.  Sorry, I misspoke:  Sam's Chop House still is all of this, but Steve and his chef partner , Simon, have now moved on . . . . to Damson.

I just wanted to see what happened next.  Sam's fit a certain profile—and brilliantly, too—but a neighbourhood restaurant would be rather different, because it is literally around the corner from Steve's home in Heaton Moor. Therefore, I reasoned, it must be exactly the kind of spot that Steve and his wife Alison would like to drop into for a meal.  In fact, the radiant Alison is now working a couple of evenings a week at Damson, after a full day's labour at all the other things she has to do (she is a highly skilled intensive care nurse, and they have two teenage children) . . . but this is true neighbourhood spirit.  It is a really fun place to hang out.

For one thing, they have got the lighting and the music spot on.  And the chairs:  it is comfortable to sit in the upholstered chairs, and the lighting is mellow and diffused.  The music is low-key jazz (not drawing attention to itself, just providing background lift to the nice buzz of conversation), and you can either sit and chatter, or just sit and relax.

As for the food, it is so perfect as to be astonishing. I'm not saying that chefs are bound by their surroundings, but I must say that I deeply admired Simon's cuisine before, and I am simply in awe of what he can now do, with all of this freedom at his command.  As in all truly creative endeavours, it is a team effort, and I was also able to meet Sally (who did her apprenticeship at the Fat Duck and also the Manoir Quatre Saisons—oh, she is impressive!).  Since I only had time to have two meals there, I can describe very few dishes;  but one example will suffice, to give an idea of their combined brilliance.  Simon had concocted the idea of a Nicoise salad with salmon . . . . the olives (an integral part of such a dish) were a sort of tapenade smeared diagonally across the plate, the salmon was cooked to perfection (crispy on the outside, moist on the inside), and the poached egg was literally quivering on the plate, when the waiter set it down on the table in front of me. Randomly strewn about the rectangular plate were leaves of baby gem lettuce and some haricots verts.    Perfect.

It was the sort of dish that you might expect to have at the Savoy, only you probably wouldn't have anything that was so very refined and elegant and that actually tasted really good at the same time.  I can say the same thing, devoutly, about the duck liver pate which I had for a starter before the salad . . . . the combination of absolutely perfect and lyrically wonderful is rare.  Very inspiring!

I admired this so much because elegant food is not always delicious.  This was both things at once.

I could go on and on about the presentation of the wine list, which organizes itself by varieties of grapes (though it also tells you the country, as well), and there are different sorts of sherry on offer, and also of port . . . . unfortunately, I didn't get to stay that long, to try everything I would have wished.  I tried one dessert, insisting upon it in particular, as I love a chocolate fondant (and this one came with cardamom ice-cream!, house made, of course).  I tasted the house white, and also the very special Sauvignon Blanc, glowing with pleasure.

All of this is an art form.  The orchestration of the menu, the friendliness yet politely distanced staff, their courteous meeting of the diners who come in through the front door, the concoction of the menu. . . . Its very complexity is part of what intrigues me.  It is very much a team effort, to create such a wonderful atmosphere.  And I like it all the more for being a neighbourhood spot. I shall go on considering it to be my own neighbourhood restaurant, up to and including the next time I can get there.  Oooh, I hope it will be soon!

Janice Rossen

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