Portfolio

Portfolio is the ambitious project from Julian Pizer, who co-founded Another Hand, and Cameron Foster, the owner of Deux Six Wines. It was initially focused on serving the best Champagnes available but without the accompanying snobbery. Since then, it has launched a high-end restaurant experience with serious tasting menus at serious prices.

With Pizer in the kitchen, Portfolio is bound to attract the North’s most committed foodies. The tasting menus aim for bites of perfection. Course after course of carefully constructed mouthfuls that concentrate layers of flavour into one very small plate.

The 18-course tasting menu is an examination of Modern British cooking with typical dishes including carrot tart with gooseberry and fresh curds or Orkney scallop with magnolia and preserved tomato.

At over £150pp, it’s an interesting test of Manchester’s dining scene. Will it win a Michelin star and plaudits for pushing the boundaries of contemporary cooking? Or will it be forced to pare back its pricing and introduce an a la carte alongside the tasting menus which, in fairness, are more of an event than just a meal?

In the meantime, the lunchtime tasting menu is excellent value for food of this calibre. £75 may not seem like a bargain but for ten courses of precision and skill, it undoubtedly is. It’s also less than half the price of the 18-course blowout.