Fold Review

Opened in early 2023 in Marple Bridge near Stockport, Fold is a 'friendly neighbourhood bistro and bottle shop' (according to the website anyway). Having received a plethora of decent write ups from the local press and indeed regular punters alike, the award of an AA rosette followed in October 2024. Being but a short drive away, that award seemed as good an excuse as any to give the place a try, so I duly rocked up for lunch with my wife, on a snowy November Friday.

The restaurant sits on a fairly busy road and although street parking is limited, there are a couple of free car parks a short walk away; we parked at Brabyns Brow just around the corner. The welcome on arrival was warm and even though it was (literally) freezing outside, there was plenty of heating turned on in the restaurant. Inside had a nice feel; it's a fairly small restaurant but it didn't feel too cramped by any means. There are a few tables and a bar area at the front, with more tables towards the back overlooking the open kitchen.

Open kitchens are of course quite popular nowadays, the only negative I would say is there were some seriously loud machine noises coming out of there for a few minutes when we first sat down (something sounded a bit knackered to be honest), but that fortunately stopped after a while. We were the first in the restaurant and although I wouldn't say it was a busy service, a few more tables did arrive during our meal which was good to see.

On offer at lunch is multi course sharing menu split (more or less) into snacks, cold plates, hot plates and desserts. Our waitress explained the sharing concept and advised around four or five courses between the two of us would be right. Drinks wise, there's a concise but interesting wine list and a sort of drinks list (when requested); although it didn't list every drink available, it showed the cocktails and non-alcoholic options which was useful given my wife wasn't drinking. My wife enjoyed a glass of Cherryade whilst I had a couple of Boatyard gin and tonics which were perfectly pleasant and at only £6 a pop, about as cheap a G&T as you could wish for in a decent restaurant.

To begin we ordered a couple of options from the snacks section of the menu. The Polish sourdough bread was nice enough (albeit I don't think made in house), accompanied by some tasty olive flavoured butter. The Manchester IPA beignets though weren't great, they didn't pack much flavour at all and seemed to lack any hint of seasoning which was a shame.

Next came our cold plates, our bowl of beetroot, blackberry and sea purslane was nicely balanced and very enjoyable. But the duck parfait served on duck fat focaccia was seriously good; the parfait was delicious (as good a duck parfait as I could recall eating anywhere), velvety smooth and full of flavour. So often parfait is over chilled and over firm, but not here, I'd happily eat that dish again any time.

First of our hot plates was cauliflower with kale, pickle and walnuts. This was another very tasty dish, the cauliflower was well delivered but the cream sauce it sat atop was delicious. Alongside this we went for the wild caught game, listed on the menu as the dreaded MP for 'market price' (which quite often turns out to be 'made up price'). For our visit this was partridge; the breast was nicely cooked but the legs were under and bleeding on the plate. Although there were some tasty elements, with hindsight I wish I'd picked something else from the menu.

After some very enjoyable savoury courses, there was little chance of us leaving without dessert. Given we'd been told at the start of the meal all the dishes were sharing plates, we'd assumed the same applied to the desserts, but in reality that wasn't the case which would have been good to know before ordering. Although a lot of restaurants that do sharing plates do treat desserts as individual dishes, we've been to plenty of restaurants that don't.

So, from the two desserts we ordered, I had chocolate option which consisted of a thick cylindrical dark chocolate shell encasing a lovely chocolate mousse and accompanied by a silky smooth celeriac ice cream. It was a very interesting and delicious dessert and I was quite happy I didn't have to share any in the end! My wife had the milk malabi with honey and blackberries which wasn't quite as good, but still a decent effort.

We finished with a couple of cappuccinos and after collecting the bill (complete with 10% service charge) a very enjoyable lunch came to an end. Overall, I was impressed with the standard of food here, there was some very good cooking on show with great flavours alongside some decent technical skill. Service was good also and the pacing too was solid, with our meal taking around 90 minutes.

Our visit was perhaps a touch more expensive than I'd been expecting, but we probably would have been fine with one less dish between us. It's definitely not a cheap eat though which would go some way to explaining why there were plenty of free tables during our visit (the bakery and cafe a couple of doors down looked much busier) but I for one hope more people give the place a try; I'm certainly looking forward to paying them another visit in future.