The Edinburgh Castle Pub — Restaurant in Manchester

What can I say? This place is going to become VERY popular VERY quickly!

The waitress who sat us down was lovely and friendly (I think she was from NZ...not that it matters 😆). She gave us our menus and explained the dishes as there are a few sharer plates. We were then served by the manager for the rest of the evening who was equally friendly and attentive. Top service all round!

But that's not the best bit. The food was INCREDIBLE!

The menu changes but for our visit there were 4 or 5 'nibble/snack' options, maybe 6 or 7 starters and the same number of mains.

As we were a larger group we decided to order stuff to share among all of us....so to start we went for a dozen oysters, 2 portions of pork scratchings, 2 portions of sourdough bread and 2 portions of 'cheese doughnuts'...all from the snack part of the menu.

Everything was so so good. The oysters were ultra fresh, shucked perfectly and served with a lovely dressing already applied. The pork scratchings were actually thin biscuits of pork crackling - served hot and really really crispy. The bread is sourced from Pollen bakery (like many Mcr restaurants) but for £4.50 they gave us 4 thick slices with a generous amount of whipped butter made in house. Compare that to Hawksmoor in Mcr where you get 1 slice of the same bread for £5! Finally the cheese doughnuts were the star of the show...4 crispy and fluffy mini doughnut balls filled with oozy cheese...honestly you could eat 20 of them!

For mains we ordered 3 of their sharer plates. A whole roast plaice served with a herby beurre blanc sauce and tobiko fish eggs on top. A 1kg bone-in sirloin steak served with a rich borderlaise sauce...and an oxtail and walnut pie. They had 3 sides - beef dripping chips, seasonal greens and smoked sweetcorn...so we ordered all of them.

Every dish was phenomenal! The fish was huge, ultra fresh and cooked to perfection...and the sauce was brilliant. The steak was the star of the show imo...the beef had an amazing deep flavour and the sauce was to die for...literally the best beef jus/borderlaise/gravy I've ever eaten. The added bonus was that the bone part of the sirloin included the short rib...something I've never seen before...and the meat around the cross-cut ribs was even tastier than the steak! The pie ended up being too much for us...which was not to say it wasn't great...because it was. But it is super rich...with the butter-iest pastry encasing rich braised oxtail. It came with a generous jug of the same sauce that was on the steak. It was great...but it's a heavyweight dish!

All the mains we ordered were generous sharers for 2...the pie could serve 3...and the prices were really good. The fish was £30, the steak was £70 and the pie was £40. A 1kg sirloin at Hawksmoor would set you back £100...£110 with 2 meagre sauce pots. The steak there is nowhere near as good as this was - neither is the sauce. And we got double the sauce here!

The beef dripping chips and seasonal greens were equally amazing. The chips especially were so crispy on the outside and fluffy inside...again just on a different level to the same thing at Hawksmoor.

The wine list is well put together...with a good selection of whites and reds ranging from £30-60 odd quid. Both the white and red we chose were around £40 a bottle and really good quality...I just can't remember what they were called!

If I had 2 minor critiques it was that a. The sweetcorn side was pretty average compared to everything else and b. They refused to give us any ketchup for the chips as they make all their sauces in house.

All in we had the dozen oysters, 6 snack starters, 3 main sharers, 4 sides, 3 bottles of wine and 4 pints. We were too full for desert and the bill was £400...which I think was amazingly reasonable for the quality of...

The Edinburgh Castle Dining Room, on the first floor of the Edinburgh Castle Pub, is a fantastic Mancunian foodie jewel, serving great British sourced food, right in the heart of Ancoats. With a menu that changes frequently to make the most of what's currently in season, it's not to be missed!

Me and my partner visited after reading a review by the Guardian's Jay Rayner. Since his review, it seems the service has toned down talking about the local origins of the food, but that's still the main selling point - everything here is from the UK, and is as local as possible. And some of the food they've sourced, from those local producers... Just wow!

We started with oysters, which were as fresh and tasty as you'd want, with a light mignonette to go with it. Alongside this we had a beetroot and goats cheese plate, and an heirloom tomato, tropea onion and creme fraiche plate. Both were nice, but the beetroot and goats cheese in particular was a stand out - one of the two top dishes when we visited. If you order anything from here, this is one to go for!

Alongside the above mentioned starters, we also ordered the sourdough bread and butter, with the bread coming from local Ancoats institution Pollen. It was as delicious as you'd expect, light and warm, with the locally sourced butter having that kick from the salt and adding real flavour.

For the mains, my partner went with the dumplings, and I ordered the skate wings with Jersey Royal potatoes. The dumplings and skate were both well cooked, but it was in the jersey royal mash, in the veg, where things really shone - they were delicious, creamy, and with a taste of the various herbs etc put in them too. And the skate was cooked well with the flavour of the fish really showing.

Alongside our mains, we also got the chips cooked on beef fat. They were incredibly tasty, a real - crisp, flavourful, and it reminded me a lot of my nan (who would have been old enough to cook with lard back in the day!). They were another hit that I'd recommend ordering.

Finally, dessert. And this course stole the show - a half dozen Madeleines. (You can also order a dozen, but after eating all the above, three each is probably enough!). They arrived fresh out of the oven, with a wonderful rich taste and almost biscuity texture at the edges, complimented perfectly by the cream. Along with the beetroot starter, it was a clear stand out.

The price for all this, a bottle of wine, and service charge, was £132, or c. £65 per person. For a three course meal of this quality, with the wine too (£37), we can't complain, but it's not cheap eats! But well worth it.

The Dining Room itself is on the first floor of the pub, up some stairs, with the toilets in the basement level. As such, anyone with mobility issues might struggle, so that's something to...

I’ve been meaning to write about The Edinburgh Castle on the edge of Cutting Room Square in this recently revived corner of Manchester for some time, as it has become something of a current favourite.

The Edinburgh Castle is something of stand out from a burgeoning restaurant scene around Cutting Room Square – Manchester’s only Michelin starred restaurant, Mana, is a few steps up the road, and there are several other mid- market eateries to choose from on the square.

It’s a pub that’s been refurbished in an industrial style, with some softer touches. The semi-circular green velvet curtain keeping the chill from the opening door is one such touch, bringing an element of glamour to what could easily have been too hard a space.

The menu is succinct. The lunch menu consists of two snacks, three starters, four mains, four sides and three desserts and is priced at a very reasonable £21 for two courses and £24 for three courses. The dinner menu is slightly more expensive and slightly longer, but still concise and approachable.

Having been a few times, I have tried the fish and chips, steak and chips and yesterday the whole roasted plaice on the bone with potato salad and green beans with confit garlic. My dining partner, being vegetarian, ordered the beetroot salad to start, followed by the Cep tart fine. We also enjoyed the five seeded sourdough with whipped butter.

The plaice was perfectly cooked on the bone, with a hint of the butter it was cooked in, making for a well-balanced, not too rich piece of fish. It was delightful. The accompanying potato salad was served at room temperature – there’s nothing worse than fridge cold, hard potato salad. It had a hint of dill. A little more would have been appreciated, but that’s personal preference.

My dining partner had nothing but oohs and ahs for the mushroom tart. We shared the green beans with confit garlic which were well cooked with a delicate garlic flavour, as they should have been. There’s a lot of restrained cooking going on.

The fig and champagne dessert was a deconstructed cheesecake, but none the worse for it, with a perfectly balanced and deliciously tart cheese, buttery biscuit base (thanks Greg…) and ripe figs with little gelatine decorations. A triumph.

From previous visits I can tell you the fish and chips is as good as (if not better than) the best you’ll find in Manchester, and the steak is equally as good.

I can’t find anything to fault about The Edinburgh Castle, after several visits. Both the food and service are top notch and consistent with it.

In short, go. Don’t think about it – just make a reservation and go. I hesitate to recommend it, because I selfishly want to keep it an underrated, unknown gem, but in the interests of supporting a local business and doing the right thing, it...