10 Tib Lane

We visited recently and thought this was very good. Not 5* excellent, but very, very good and for those of you who don't mind reviews that are different to "this was the best place ever, 5*" or "shocking, don't go, 1*", then hopefully this is useful. It's a small plates menu (except for their Sunday lunch, which we would recommend as 5*). I've tried to get on board with small plates, but I've yet to be persuaded that the priority is anything other than to make you pay more for a full portion of food than if you just ordered a main meal. When the response to "no we've not been here before" is "OK I'll just explain the menu to you", I'm just not persuaded that small plates is really a good thing. One main meal? Brilliant. 3-4 small tapas? Beautiful. A small plate for 2-3 carrots for not much short of £10? Hm. Sorry, no. There were 3-4 "big small plates". Tbh, I'd have rather just had any one of these as a main meal, with the best smaller plates as a starter. That being said, rant over... the food was very good. It's comparable in quality to Stretford Canteen and Pip, but probably a little cheaper than SC and probably a more generous portion than Pip. Another comparison would be Higher Ground. It's a bit cheaper than their set menu, but the quality and originality at HG is much, much higher. This food was generally very good quality, but there wasn't a vast amount that a very good cook couldn't prepare at home. A minor gripe again about the carrots. They're so cheap. The expense of a carrot dish is the skilled staff time. They're a perfect restaurant ingredient because they're cheap but they're fantastic prepared with skill like at 10 Tib Lane. If you're going to charge so much for a carrot dish, give us a few more carrots please. The puddings were good. The cheese, pear and spiced bread was beautiful. But the rhubarb wasn't tart enough to go with a sweet biscuit and a sweet mousse. We loved the wine list and the generous "No/Low" alcohol menu. I'd have loved one more non-alcoholic beer option for those that don't enjoy German-style lager. There are some excellent 0.5% pale ales and IPAs by Manchester breweries (or Guinness 0.0 is great too). So all in all, very good. But we'll probably only be going back for their (absolutely superb) Sunday lunch or a drink.