Skof Review

Since opening in May 2024, it's fair to say Skof, located in central Manchester, has been one of the hottest tickets in town. The first solo restaurant from Tom Barnes (who spent many years under renowned chef Simon Rogan) has earned rave reviews from every angle consistently since opening, and the award of a Michelin star in February 2025 (and three AA rosettes later that year too) cemented this as a restaurant worthy of note in the eyes of the major restaurant guides too. After some rapid mouse clicking a few months earlier to secure a booking, I was eagerly looking forward to my first visit as I rocked up for lunch with my wife on a cold January Saturday, to celebrate my wife's birthday.

The booking process in truth had been absolutely fine; like many restaurants in high demand they release bookings at a set time in advance, but this is well communicated across various channels (including email if you subscribe). I was actually able to book a couple of minutes before the official 11am release time which was handy; I would guess lunch tables are slightly less in demand than dinner, but be aware the tables for all services are snapped up very quickly. They take a deposit up front for the cheapest menu option available for your chosen service, which is a perfectly normal practice for a top restaurant nowadays and an eminently fair approach in my view.

As a city centre venue, there's no dedicated parking here but the Arndale shopping centre multi-storey car park is a sub five minute walk away. There was a little bit of a queue of people when we arrived, but we were warmly greeted, coats were taken and we were shown to our table in the dining room. The room itself has a nice industrial chic vibe, and it feels spacious too; we were a good distance away from our nearest neighbouring table. On the table was a birthday card for my wife signed by the team which is always an appreciated touch.

Pretty much as soon as we sat down, lunch kicked off with a little cup of onion and lemon thyme broth; it was a very nice start to the meal on a cold day. On offer at lunch are three menus; a short four course lunch menu and the two longer tasting menus. Like all top restaurants, the full longest menu is available for lunch which is always reassuring to see, and that's naturally what we opted for.

Drinks wise, there are three levels of wine pairing available, a non-alcoholic pairing (which my wife selected) and a mixed pairing which sounded intriguing, so I went for that. The menu states the restaurant has 'put a lot of thought into our drinks pairings' and I've seen similar things echoed on the restaurant's website and social media, so I had pretty high hopes for my not-all-wine matches.

Outside of the pairings, there's a decent wine and drinks list too with a solid range and a thoughtful selection of cocktails, including three non-alcoholic options. The staff informed us when the drinks pairing would start (and that would be after the initial few snack courses), so we ordered a couple of drinks to go with those initial plates. I had a honey and malt old fashioned which was nice enough (albeit with an unnecessarily massive block of restaurant logo branded ice in the middle), whilst my wife tried the oolong and meadowsweet tea mocktail which was OK but she wasn't too enthused by it to be honest.

Lunch began with six fairly quickfire snack courses; the first three consisted of a dexter beef tart, a mini spenwood cheese biscuit sandwich and cured halibut with horseradish served on a potato flatbread; all three bites were delicious and we both thoroughly enjoyed them. The next three snack courses don't appear on the shorter tasting menu and I could initially see why; the first consisted of two little slabs of spiced chalksteam trout, it was fine but not packing a great deal of flavour, and I found it a pretty boring dish in all honesty.

The cured trout belly that followed was also far weaker than the first three snack courses for me; again there was nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but the flavours were a bit one dimensional and it just felt very safe. At this point I was starting to regret slightly paying for the longer tasting menu, but the final snack course (also only on the longer menu) was probably my favourite of the six, glazed langoustine on grilled sourdough with cured pork cheek. This was a very moreish bite and absolutely delicious; happy days.

We were then offered the chance to go up to the counter overlooking the open kitchen for our next course; scallop with kohlrabi, fried oyster and a tomato water sauce. We were greeted by chef patron Tom who also took the role of explaining the dish for this course, quite a nice touch. The dish too was delicious, with a lovely contrast between the scallops and crunchy kohlrabi, I'd happily eat it again any time.

We were then shown back to our table for the next three fish/meat free courses (more or less). First was a miso custard with mushroom, truffle and a mushroom dashi. This was another high quality dish, digging through the nice elements on top to the custard underneath was a joy, and the dish as a whole packed plenty of flavour.

A 'ragout of English grains' came next, with more mushroom again, dark beer and ramson. I enjoyed this too; this dish isn't on the shorter tasting menu but I wouldn't call it filler, it was a very pleasant bowl. We then moved on to confit potatoes, with a cheese sauce, pickled walnut and sherry olive oil. It was another little lovely bowl of goodness which we both enjoyed, and the accompanying little laminated brioche roll each was decent too.

We'd been impressed with the food up to this point, but the steamed cod that came next was probably our favourite dish of the meal. The fish was cooked perfectly, with the foamy buttermilk sauce, bed of onions and smoked eel all really singing in absolute harmony; it was a pretty faultless dish.

We were then, unfortunately, brought crashing back down to earth with a slab of roasted duck, accompanied by a sauce with fig and a celeriac puree. Whilst the puree was delicious, and the sauce was fine, the duck cookery wasn't great, albeit it tasted OK. It also just really felt like the dish was missing something; all that was on the plate was a slab of not very well cooked duck and a dollop of puree, nothing else.

There was a little mini bread loaf on the side also, which had some additional duck inside, a nice idea for sure but this too was underbaked and not very pleasant to eat. This was a bit of a strange dish for me; to execute two key elements of the dish that badly was unexpected given what we'd been served to this point. Normally you hope for the last savoury course on a tasting menu to be a gloriously triumphant finale, but this was anything but.

But such is life, and we were still hopeful of some tasty dessert courses as we entered the sweet part of the menu. The crossover came in the form of amakase sorbet topped with an oil made from oolong tea, and it was worked very well as a refreshing palette cleanser.

Next was poached forced Yorkshire rhubarb, served with woodruff cream, rose geranium and almond. This would have been a very good dish if the rhubarb packed more flavour, but it didn't, it had been prepared in a way that unfortunately left it a bit watery and flavourless. That was a shame as the other elements in the bowl were tasty and it would have been a really decent dessert if the rhubarb had given me the sharp zingy goodness I'd been expecting.

We did both very much enjoy the next dessert though; a lovely gingerbread mousse atop which sat some very good milk ice cream, along with toasted oats and kuri squash. This was a great tasting and technically accomplished dessert, and I could have very happily eaten a couple of bowls of this for sure.

The penultimate dessert (and the only one that is on the longer tasting menu but not the shorter) consisted of two little ice cream cones, containing Manchester honey and topped with black truffle. These were ok but I'd definitely class them as filler on the longer menu unfortunately. The dollop of honey in the bottom of the cone wasn't particularly pleasant and didn't carry the sweetness necessary to make this dish work for me, it just felt a little bit forced together.

Before the final dessert, we were offered tea/coffee which we took. My wife enjoyed her fresh mint tea (served in a suitably heavy metal tea pot) whilst my cappuccino was small but perfectly well delivered.

The final dessert is titled 'Barney's Tiramisu', a tribute to chef patron's Tom late father. This was served by our waiter from a large serving bowl into our little bowls in not a particularly elegant fashion. It was tasty and I really appreciate the story behind it, but it wasn't a one star level dessert for me. I guess they treat it more as a petit four type offering (we didn't get anything else with coffee) which is a shame, as I always look forward to some unexpected little bursts of sweet goodness at the end of a high class meal. But hey, you can't always get what you want.

And that as they say was pretty much that. Collecting the bill (complete with 12.5% service charge) took a little bit of time, but nothing too dramatic, and our deposit has been deducted from the total without issue. Overall we enjoyed our lunch here and there were a lot of positive aspects, albeit one or two little niggles.

The service throughout was very good; one gentleman who served us several courses (a guy with a man bun) was fantastic and one of the most personable waiters we've had the pleasure of meeting in a long time. We were well looked after in general and the menu pacing was OK, albeit the gaps between some of the savoury courses were a little bit longer than I would have liked.

Drinks wise, my wife enjoyed her non-alcoholic pairing; it wasn't the best flight she's had but was far from the worst, and all six glasses were eminently drinkable. Given my (perhaps unreasonable) expectations based on what was printed on the menu and their website, my mixed pairing turned out to be a bit of a uninspired let down. From the six drinks I had, two were the same as my wife's, two were glasses of wine from the wine flight, and two were not very enjoyable beers from a local brewery. I'd been hoping for a little bit more imagination here; if I returned I'd almost certainly opt for one of the wine flights instead.

And as for the most important element? There's no question the food delivered was of a high standard, and we enjoyed nearly all the courses. There were one or two surprising lapses (the duck course most memorably) but that aside, there was a good level of skill and imagination on show.

I guess given the price point (towards the upper end of one star pricing) I had been hoping to see food pushing more towards two star and four/five rosette level, but that's not what's on offer here, the food is what I would describe as very solid one star level. And with hindsight, they're taking exactly the right approach by sticking to that level in my view.

The reservations for every service here sell out in minutes and I would imagine they could easily sell twice the number of covers they do now with more space. If they can sell a one star menu for this price then why on earth would they try and push for more awards, then potentially have to raise the menu price and lose that balance that's working so well, it makes absolute sense to stick at this level.

Regardless, this is by any standard an excellent restaurant with many positive qualities. I wish the team all the best moving forwards and although it's not somewhere I'm planning to rush back to, I'd have no objection whatsoever to eating here in future, and I'm sure I'd experience high quality cooking and excellent service once again.