One thing to know about me is I’m a good home cook, baker (love my bread machine, nearly as much as my partner) and food lover, sadly with a dairy allergy that means I get some strange looks and awkward questions. Why do you know this? Well, food is what gives us energy and me also gives me passion, so the review will be full of passion and an odd note of caution. What is a Marriott V&A? Well, it’s an independent Marriott hotel in the heart of Manchester near Spinning Fields in the new ST Johns district near Aviva Studios. Therefore, it is going to boom with the Soho House and Mollys just moved in a whole St John district with Versa Studios (the old Granada Studios).
If you were in Manchester in the 90s, you may remember the high years of Granada Studios and some famous tv shows like Coronation Street. After a hard day’s filming, casts would head to the famous V&A for drinks, which made it a place for good celebrity spotting. Now the Marriott is taking on a new life as a chilled space for good food and drink with the vibrant history of film and TV. The space hasn’t changed much since my first visit around 2021 when I came back to Manchester. I mean, it’s still a cosy space, with great views of the river Irwell and the St Johns expanse where the famous Coronation Street tram crash happened. In the 90s, you grabbed a drink and waited for the celebrity; now you wait for the food and drink to arrive while looking at the Irwell.
The service was normal for a city hotel, and we didn’t have a long wait at all for things to arrive, which is always a plus. We started with a spread of roasted padron peppers, hummus with warm bread, and chicken goujons. The peppers arrived in a traditional Spanish style terracotta dish and looked fantastic, though they just needed a pinch more salt to really make them pop. Being a bread snob, the warm bread was a lovely touch and worked perfectly with the hummus. For the mains, we went for the ale battered haddock and chips and a dry aged sirloin steak with fries. The quality of the meat was clear, though my advice is to be very specific with the kitchen on your preference. I asked for medium-rare and it came out closer to medium-well, but the flavour of the dry aged cut was still excellent.
Navigating the menu with my dairy allergy was handled well enough in the end. While it took a bit of extra explaining to make sure the waiter fully caught the drift of what I needed, they were helpful and made sure I was looked after. It is good to know they take the time to get it right, even if it requires a little more conversation than usual.
To wash it all down, my plus one had a rose wine while I stuck with a Guinness. We finished with the classic sticky toffee pudding and a fresh mango rice dessert. The mango dish was lovely and sweet, which worked really well to cut through the richness of the steak. Even though the rice was a tiny bit on the dry side, the flavours were spot on. It is strange to sit in a place that used to be the haunt of the Coronation Street cast and feel it becoming something entirely new. The St Johns district is changing fast, but the V&A is holding its ground well. It has managed to keep that cosy, historic feel while pushing forward with a menu that actually cares about the ingredients. If you are in Manchester and want somewhere that feels a bit more “grown up” than the chaos of Deansgate, this is it. It is definitely worth the visit, especially if you have a Canal Street card, as you can present it for 10% off. The V&A has found its second act, and I think it is going to be a long one.
Review by,
James
For Canal Street Media