Saison — Restaurant in Manchester

Very sad to see my once excellent neighbourhood bar in terminal decline. Saison was launched with a clear direction: excellent choice of rare and classic craft and European ales and great food. Of late it has offered these in ever diminishing amounts. Saison is an establishment with no direction. One week they launch a French brasserie style menu, literally the next week they have a huge deli fridge taking up half the bar. We do small plates! We do burgers! No cohesion, no direction, no idea. Staff of late have no idea what they stock. Have asked for Duchesse de Borgogne on several occasions to be told they don't stock, when it's clearly in fridge. No passion for what they sell, busy sat chatting at bar instead of learning/caring about the beers. Wines terrible, left with cork in for god knows how long gathering dust next to hot spotlights. None of my wine bibbing local friends will set foot in door. Cask ale taps been off for weeks, always a sign of bar on last legs. Thursday nights (third busiest night of week traditionally?) now entire front of bar given over to record stall, back to decks. Barely anywhere to sit, but why would you want to anyway when beer selection is so pedestrian? A couple of Marble kegs is best you're going to get, this in a city with myriad world class breweries offering every style imagineable. Baffling but consistent with Saison overall. I could go on but I won't bore you, other than to say what a great shame, Saison opened with great promise, went some way to delivering on that (excellent roasts initially!), and, since the initial management team's departure, has gone into a steady, aimless, meandering...

I go every Sunday afternoon from, 3.00pm to 5,00pm ish to listen to amazing professional local jazz musicians. Saison is a totally unique live jazz venue in Manchester. They have top musicians, almost as if playing in your front room and the opportunity to drink from a specially chosen range of the best craft ales around, such as Bread & Butter (Vocation) Factotum (Pomona), Lightbulb, etc. along with other beers, wine etc. Last Saturday, Janet and I had our wedding party at our home off Burton Rd. I asked Dave, the new owner, to make 2 large trays of varied vegetarian sandwiches and wraps Plus a smaller platter of vegan sandwiches. Absolutely delicious, fresh and a great variety of fillings, with compliments from our guests. The few that were left over were toasted for brunch, the next day. Nothing wasted. I thoroughly recommend Dave's outside catering for quality, great price and local home delivery....

I approached Saison about hiring out their space for a party, they said they do not rent out the space but they were happy for us to book the second floor out for the evening, which worked perfectly. They also put us in touch with David, who is a caterer they work with. He put together an incredible meze/tapas spread for us with fresh focaccia, a range of delicious cheeses, great salads, lots of great finger food, a charcuterie board and some really good chocolate brownies. There was so much good and all our guests loved it! It worked perfectly, would definitely recommend for a birthday party etc. We had...