I don't really do 'up norf' on a week day very often, but somehow found myself there today and looking for lunch. 1847 looked promising - though the concept of pizza from Dough sounded good in theory; I've a natural gravitation to all vegetarian places.Decor's pleasant and the menu fairly average looking; I didn't have long so ordered a starter and main to come together:
Deep fried salt and pepper tofu, satay, wasabi and soy sauce (v) £5.50Main+drink is £10 on a weekday lunchtime, which is really not bad at all. Unfortunately the soft drink choice is limited, so if you're not drinking wine then it's not so great.
Sage & leek sausages, vegetable mash, spring vegetables with red wine gravy (v) £10.95
The restaurant was about a third full - service was polite and the food come relatively quickly:
Cubes of plain tofu with salt and pepper seasoning; kind of dull on its own, not greatly improved by soya sauce and sadly the tsp of satay sauce didn't really go far enough.The main course unfortunately wasn't much better:
Generous portion of greens and mashed potato, but virtually unseasoned and after a few mouthfuls more of an endurance than pleasure. The sausages were bland and the gravy not plentiful enough to compensate.Given away by my less than surreptitious attempt at taking photographs; the experience was in part rectified by being spotted by a friend of internet days past. It was good to catch up and having waited 10 minutes for our plates to be cleared (and still 30 minutes until closing) we got to share the mutual disappointment of finding that dessert was no longer being served.
What's with that? I've heard good things about their puddings - it could have made up for an otherwise sub par meal. Supposedly the chef was working 'as a favour', which is why they'd stopped serving.
I want to like 1847. Its 33 of 613 restaurants on TripAdvisor and in amongst the horror stories there are many positive reviews too. Perhaps they were having a bad day?
Next time I'm in Manchester I'll get a main course at Dough and dessert from 1847 (if they're still serving it that is!).
This is a very similar experience to ours, and I agree, I really want to like it. They didn't have my first choice starter (early on Saturday evening) so I picked an appetizer which was just store bought bread and dip. Nice, but nothing you couldn't have done yourself with a trip to Sainsbury's. Main was better but again, nothing special. It has potential, and I will try it again, but it isn't giving other veggie places in the country much competition.