Taurus

We often go out with friends for a meal in Manchester city centre and have had so many good mealson Canal Street that we realised we had exhausted the menu and that it was about time to try something new.

Having heard really good things about Taurus - a café bar and restaurant also situated on Canal Street - we decided to give it a go.

TELL ME ABOUT IT

Taurus is situated right in the heart of Manchester's gay village and is renowned for having a friendly and welcoming staff base, as well as a varied clientele. It has won lots of awards for good food as well as a good selection of drinks. There is a warm welcome for everyone here, be they gay, bisexual, straight, young or old. Although the décor and artwork is an acquired taste, Taurus has a classy and relaxing atmosphere and the staff members are incredibly polite and attentive.

The place itself is set over two floors, with a flight of stairs leading down from the restaurant/bar area to the toilets. Downstairs, there is also a private function room, although I cannot comment on this having never seen it. The toilets are okay in terms of cleanliness, but they would really benefit from a bit of a revamp. Having said that, they do the job and they were fully stocked with toilet roll and soap. The main restaurant has seating on the flat and a raised seated area which faces onto the canal and main street, so you can watch the world go by. Unlike a few of the other restaurants on this street, Taurus is disabled-friendly, having a ramp at the main entrance and an accessible toilet to the right of the bar area as you enter the restaurant.

Though colourful, the décor is incredibly dark and one of my friends mentioned that they found it hard to see their food, though this wasn't really something which would have bothered me, especially given my experience - which will make my reasoning behind this a little more apparent! As soon as we arrived at the restaurant, we were asked what we wanted to drink, and the service was friendly and speedy, so much so that we had to ask for a bit more time to look at the menu. The drinks menu is fairly reasonable considering the location of the restaurant, which is known for its pricey drinks. There was a range of beers, cocktails and wines and we opted for a bottle of Jack Rabbit, which was a nice fruity Merlot and not bad for the price at £10.95.

WHAT SORT OF FOOD DO THEY DO?

As you'd expect from an award-winning restaurant, Taurus has a great deal of choice in terms of the food it offers. There is everything from Dim Sum platters and buckets of mussels to the more traditional and unpretentious pub fare of Lasagne and Bangers and mash. In short, first impressions are very good and the prices seem reasonable when considering some of the rich and exotic foods on the menu. There is a huge range of appetisers and sandwiches and a few veggie and vegan menu choices too and it almost seemed a shame to me that I was in the mood for simple, bog standard comfort food as opposed to monkfish or venison. In hindsight, I can only say that I wish I'd chosen differently!

HOW EASY WAS IT TO ORDER?

As I have already mentioned, the service here is commendable and we were waited on by two chaps who were very smiley and chatty, which always makes me feel more relaxed. There were four of us eating and, at first I was a bit put out about the fact that the first waiter took our order using the power of his mind. I suppose it's great if you have a good memory and can remember everyone's requests, but a waiter who doesn't write stuff down always makes me feel uneasy in case they forget what you want or bring you the wrong thing. Thankfully (or perhaps unfortunately as it turned out) our waiter did indeed have a good memory and managed to take down our starters and mains, which included steaks and all the different methods of cooking them without a hitch.

We all had different starters. I opted for the freshly made soup of the day, which apparently came with a bread roll and butter. I wanted something reasonably light so I could go to town a bit with my main and, at £2.95, it sounded like a bit of a bargain. I love soup, so I didn't bother asking what flavour it was.

My husband opted for the trio of loaded potato skins, which were described as 'fried skins with salsa, blue cheese and avocado' and would have been right up my street, if I hadn't been concerned about them being so filling. At £4.50, these were slightly more expensive, but still not going to break the bank.

Our friends opted for Thai fishcakes with a curry sauce (£5.25) and Venison pork and port pate served with melba toast and homemade chutney (£4.95), both of which would have been a much better choice than the soup in my opinion.

THE STARTERS

It didn't take long for the starters to arrive and, at first sight, I was really impressed with the portions. My soup, which had been advertised as being served with a bread roll, came with what looked like an entire sliced baguette! There was a small bowl set on a massive gourmet plate with sliced bread all around the edge. I love my bread, but this was a bit over the top for a starter and I ended up forcing myself to leave half of it to leave some room for my main course. To give credit where it is due, I have to hand it to them for providing an equivalent amount of butter to the amount of bread. So often with starters, you run out of one of the important ingredients, such as toast to go with the vast lump of pate, but they seemed to get portion size right with my friends pate and melba toast too.

The soup was not quite as appealing and I still have absolutely no idea what flavour it was supposed to be. I'd hazard a guess at cabbage or onion (or both), but it didn't really have any discernible taste. On top of this it was freezing cold, but it was also filled with what looked like stringy bits of seaweed and cabbage. These were each the length of pieces of spaghetti and did little to make me feel better, not because of the taste but because it was virtually impossible to eat. Floating in the centre of the soup was what I imagine was meant to be a crouton, but it looked like a doughball. I couldn't work out whether it was intended to be crunchy or soft, but it looked so unappetising that I pushed it to one side. The same went for the majority of my soup. I ate the liquid part, but spoons were not designed to pick up lengthy, shredded pieces of soggy cabbage or lettuce (or whatever the hell it was) and not only was it impossible to eat, it just wasn't very nice.

My husband raved about his potato skins and I have to say they looked very good indeed, especially since they came with a bit of fresh salad to top it off. Likewise, our friends' fishcakes and pate looked gorgeous and, although I didn't complain (having been a waitress, I never do until after the food has been taken away), I was struggling to see how one dish could be so spot on whilst another was not really fit to be served.

THE MAINS

For my main, I had again opted for home made comfort food and picked a dish which (to my mind) even I couldn't have managed to get wrong. Drooling by the prospect of Bangers in mustard mash and what was described as 'rich onion gravy', it didn't take me long to make a decision, and at £8.95, it seemed pretty reasonable. The main courses arrived fairly quickly after our starters had been cleared away and during our minimal wait, we were asked at least twice if we were okay for drinks, which was a nice touch.

My husband and both of our friends went for the Fillet Steak Rossini, which was served 'cooked to your liking, topped with a mushroom and pate, on a bed of sauteed potatoes with a creamy sauce'. How I wish I had opted for this! For £12.95, my friends received a huge portion of steak. It probably wouldn't have won any awards from Gordon Ramsay presentation-wise given that it arrived in slabs piled on top of potatoes that looked squashed rather than sauteed. Apparently, the pate was hiding underneath. It wasn't served with any greens and so it was effectively a plate of meat, but I didn't hear any complaints from my busily munching companions, whilst I battled to get even one mouthful of my main course down.

Now, before you think I'm a complete whingebag, please let it be known that I absolutely adore my food, to the point where I regularly have to have month long health kicks for a bit of damage (or should I say poundage) control! I can pretty much eat anything, apart from a few weird and wonderful things and very rarely feel so repulsed by a plate of food that I can't eat it. I'm also known to be the one who can't see why people are making a fuss in restaurants and regularly end up finishing people's food for them, so I'm not trying to be melodramatic about this - promise!

So, you can imagine my complete disbelief when my friends received what looked like incredibly expensive and generous slabs of meat and I was faced with the most dubious looking sausage I have ever seen sitting on a bed of congealed white mush. Topped off by what looked like parsnip shavings, the curled up sausage resembled a dog's offering and I was horrified to find that the reason my mustard mash looked so congealed was that it had obviously come out of a packet. Remember those god awful school dinners, where evil old dinner ladies forced you to wolf down every last mouthful of that gloopy excuse for potato to the point where you'd be on the verge of throwing up? The first mouthful of this stuff turned my stomach and no amount of swallowing helped me to overcome the gagging reflex. My dining companions obviously knew I was struggling, because I must have looked utterly repulsed. When the waiter came to ask how everything was, I could do no more than smile, because it was literally a battle of wills to keep the last mouthful down. I finally got myself under control and decided that by dipping it in the 'rich onion gravy' it would be better and, surely the sausage would be nice. In short, it wasn't. The gravy had no taste, the sausage was absolutely gross, both in terms of presentation and texture. I actually think that once you have made a connection between the way your food looks and the workings of an animal's digestive system, there's pretty much no return.

Being the sad little stiff upper lip Brit that I am, I didn't complain. This is partly to do with my own lousy experience of being a waitress and the sympathy I feel for the people who get the stick, but also because I didn't want to ruin our night. It always strikes me as awful that you end up having a go at the wrong people in restaurants and, I didn't want to upset some of the best waiters I have ever come across. Besides, I didn't want them to try and remedy the situation by bringing me a different dish. By this point, I'd already had to excuse myself and run to the ladies to take some very much needed deep breaths and I just wanted them to take my meal away. Before they did remove it, I asked one of my friends (also renowned for eating anything in front of him) to try a bit of my meal to make sure I wasn't being ridiculous. I also wanted to try and make an impression on the food because, even though I'm paying for a service, I always feel very embarrassed when they ask if anything was wrong. I really should be a little more honest!

Obviously, I didn't want my friend to have the same experience as me, but he does have a bit of an iron stomach, so I thought he'd be okay. He had one mouthful of the SMASH, which I begged him to dip in gravy to take away the taste of powder! He had barely got through it before he put down the knife and fork and said 'I would have been really disappointed if I'd had that.' He then tried some of the sausage and said that it wasn't much better. Never one to be defeated, he then picked up a parsnip shaving and ate it out of curiosity more than anything else. I asked him what it was and he told me he had absolutely no idea, but that whatever it was, it didn't work. Being the curious bugger that he is, my other half decided that we were obviously being melodramatic and so he tried some of my potato himself. Bear in mind that I have never once seen him refuse food apart from when he's really ill, which isn't often. He just said, 'God, I see what you mean', so I'm guessing it wasn't just me.

We were asked if we wanted anything else after the meal, though I think the waiter was referring to coffee rather than desserts as I can't recall us being asked if we wanted to see the menu. Mind you, none of us were really in the mood to bother with anything else by this point. Neither of the waiters commented upon my virtually full plate of food and I found myself assuming that they must be familiar with my reaction, although that's probably a bit harsh.

Shortly after they had cleared away our plates, we were asked if it would be okay for us to vacate the table within half an hour. The waiter was very polite about it, but it did mean rushing our bottle of wine, which was a bit annoying.

FINAL VERDICT

Although my friends' meals looked and (I'm assured) tasted, wonderful, I won't be going back to Taurus for food, although I wouldn't mind going back for drinks. I have a sneaky suspicion that they are trying to offer too much on their menu and that much of the options suffer as a result. I have no doubt that they have a recipe for success in terms of the staff they employ and their speedy service and they may have been having a bad night, but that is no good if what they are serving is potentially disappointing or enough to make you ill. Whilst writing this review, I have come across a few others which suggest that there is a lack of consistency in terms of their food being good. It might not be overly expensive as restaurants go, but I'd rather make my own sausage and potato at home for a quarter of the price, to ensure it is edible! My culinary expertise may not be award-winning, but at least I know I can enjoy it without having to pay above the odds or wind up seeing it in reverse.
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Claire Roberts
Thursday, March 15, 2007