Albert's Restaurant & Bar, Didsbury

I had been to Albert's Restaurant & Bar last year on the way to Dublin via Manchester Airport and had been incredibly impressed with the lunchtime meal deal and as we were in the area, we decided to try it again.

As the main part of the £10.95 deal at this ponsy Didsbury restaurant I had ‘albert’s fish and chips’ which was defined as sustainably sourced pacific cod fillet in a beer batter served with proper mushy peas, bread & butter and home-made tartare sauce.

For those that want to know, I had the Anglesey mussels in broth to start, which were absolutely fantastic.

The fish had an excellent clean fresh taste and fell apart into big enjoyable chunks. Sadly the batter was soggy and oily and clearly something had gone wrong in the frying process. Very disappointing.

The chips were very modern, very big, very rectangular pieces of potato which had been carefully presented on the plate, which to their credit was large, round and white. Unfortunately, although the potato texture was OK these had also not been cooked correctly. They weren’t crispy at all and had an oily, almost burnt flavour.

The mushy peas were indeed ‘proper’ with great flavour and texture.

As it was a restaurant I had to ask for vinegar, but I definitely didn’t have to add salt. The kitchen had, very kindly, added a huge number of great big blocks of rock salt onto the plate. Some of them were easy to remove as they were so big, but others were carefully camouflaged on the white background and made for an exceptionally unpleasant taste when they appeared in a bite of food. This was completely unnecessary and although having pre-salted chips is becoming more the norm in restaurants, where the bloody hell does the idea of adding lumps of rock salt come from? Ironically, there was a perfectly good salt dispenser on the table.

The tartare came in its own mini ramekin, had a good consistency and a lovely subtle texture.

A big chunk of lemon squeezed well and I decided to pass on the triangles of sliced white bread.

A really poorly thought out and badly made plate of food.