Higher Ground

good quality, good value cooking

A block or two from Piccadilly Gardens, Higher Ground is run by a triumvirate who met while working at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills in New York State. They have now rocked up at the corner of an office building in, naturally, New York Street, to bring up-to-the-minute bistro food to a vanguard gastronomic city. Much of what comes into the kitchen is supplied by their own farm Cinderwood, a market garden smallholding in Cheshire, and its vivid intensities of flavour inspire chefs and diners alike. Eaten in a bright, spacious airport-style space, with counter seating as well as tables, the result is dishes that you will want to share, rather than merely being told that you have to. Green pea and spring garlic fritters enriched with Isle of Mull Cheddar won't touch the sides, and there are pedigree cured meats such as 12-month air-dried culatello or the cannily sourced salami taormina from Curing Rebels of Brighton. Fish cookery is of the first water: Scottish turbot with grilled lettuce, spring onions and basil is perfect with a side order of waxy Marfona potatoes dressed in roasted yeast and smoked butter. Desserts are, surprisingly, of a more delicate persuasion than puds and cheesecake. Try house-cultured yoghurt with preserved gooseberry and bay leaf, or milk ice cream given a little fairground pizzazz with chocolate malt fudge. Speciality bottled ales from the English regions are a plus point, and wine-drinkers can be sure their tipple will have been left to its own devices as far as possible, turning burnt orange for Ardèche Marsanne or abashed pink for Sicilian rosato. House fizz is a Crémant de Limoux.

This neo bistro located in Manchester’s Chinatown enclave is a permanent version of a pop-up of the same name that ran for four weeks in early 2020 before Covid reared its ugly head. Run by Joseph Otway, Richard Cossins and Daniel Craig Martin, who met at Dan Barber’s renowned New York restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Higher Ground shares much of the same ethos as Barber’s restaurant with a focus on regenerative farming and local produce, of which around 90% is sourced from Cinderwood, the trio’s partner farm in nearby Nantwich. Otway, who has previously led the kitchen at Stockport restaurant Where The Light Gets In and cooked at Copenhagen’s Relæ, creates thoughtful and experimental dishes designed for sharing, with meat from Belted Galloway cows and pigs from its neighbour Jane’s Farm in Cheshire. The wine list, meanwhile, is made up of small-scale, low-intervention European wines with a strong selection of grower champagnes as well as pet nat and crémant and a large range of skin contact varieties. Higher Ground is modern and minimalistic without being austere with a long island that runs along one side of the room that serves as an open kitchen, pass and bar, as well as a counter where people can sit and eat and drink. A proper neo bistro then.