Sharing the critic’s thoughts, the restaurant said ‘It doesn’t get much better than that’
Manchester restaurant Winsome has received national recognition just two months after first opening its doors(Image: Kenny Brown | Manchester Evening News)
A national food critic has hailed a Manchester restaurant as her ‘new favourite’ just months after it opened in the city centre.
Writing in The Guardian, Grace Dent, who appeared on the 2023 series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!, heaped praise on Manchester venue Winsome in her latest food review where she described it as ‘forward-thinking fine dining’.
The restaurant, which is located within the Whitworth Locke building on Princess Street, first opened its doors in March. The space features a focus on ‘Northern hospitality’ with a menu that highlights ‘thoughtful British cooking’.
Grace, who is a regular critic on MasterChef and was also recently announced as a judge for the next series of Celebrity MasterChef, championed the venue for its ‘classy but come-all’ setting which invited anyone to visit.
Led by Chef Patron Shaun Moffat, formerly the Executive Chef of Edinburgh Castle in Ancoats, the restaurant features white-washed brick walls, candlelit tables and Parisian-style interiors alongside a regularly-changing menu that showcases ‘the very best ingredients with a comforting familiarity’.
Chef Patron Shaun Moffat is at the helm of Winsome(Image: Kenny Brown | Manchester Evening News)
Spanning both contemporary and nostalgia, recent dishes at Winsome have included skate wing with leeks and pepper dulse seaweed sauce, middle white pork sausage with swede and spring garlic, and desserts in the form of bread and butter pudding and Yorkshire rhubarb jelly and custard.
A few of the dishes play back to childhood, like the asparagus and a dippy egg starter which is served in a cartoonish dinosaur egg cup. “But Winsome is far from a novelty restaurant,” Grace wrote in the review. “Yes, there are little playful touches here and there – dino egg cups, cow-shaped gravy boats and school dinner puddings – but it’s all done in such a sleek, cool and pared-back way.”
Praised for its ‘confident, clever cooking that stays just the right side of earnest’, Grace championed her meal of whole john dory with all the Sunday lunch trimmings and went as far as to say that Winsome ‘may well be my new favourite restaurant’.
Winsome features a focus on ‘Northern hospitality’ with a menu that highlights ‘thoughtful British cooking'(Image: Kenny Brown | Manchester Evening News)
And it appears the review has gone down a hit with the Winsome team too. Sharing the article on their Instagram page, the restaurant wrote: “It doesn’t get much better than that!
“We’re over the moon, full of pride and could not be more grateful to the team who’ve worked so hard to help us deliver this dream!”
Upon opening Winsome earlier this year, Chef Shaun said he wanted to create something that simplifies dining but never compromises on quality – relying on seasonal and local produce for his and his team’s visions.
Speaking to the Manchester Evening News, he said: “I hate messing around with things, you see a lot of chefs or people in the industry who will buy the cheapest thing possible and put it through all these steps, all this nonsense and then it stops resembling food.
(Image: Kenny Brown | Manchester Evening News)
“British produce is incredible, the vegetables, the fish, the beef and the lamb here is amazing. There’s a vivid landscape of food and we should make use of it as much as we can.”
Speaking about what he hoped Winsome would bring to the city, Shaun added: “I really don’t think there’s anything like this in Manchester and we wanted to have that feeling of being upmarket and on occasion restaurant, but also very casual, nothing here should feel stuffy.”
Winsome is on 74 Princess Street, Manchester, M1 6JD. Grace Dent’s review of Winsome can be read here.