EATING OUT: Suri | King Street, Manchester

Hello! Welcome back to my blog!

So, last week we decided to go for dinner. When I say we, I mean hubs and I. There is a new restaurant just opened (it had literally just opened 2 days prior to us going) called Suri on King Street. With me being a mad foodie and hubs being a hungry foodie we decided it would be good to go check it out! This is meant to be a 'Middle Eastern' restaurant and I was really looking forwards to it. Plus, they have plenty of veggie options on the menu too which I was quite excited about - I'm sure you've heard me rant about places that only offer cheese to vegetarians! Eugh! Yeh, because all we eat is cheese! *rolls eyes* - anyhoo.... let's get into this...

I know I'm no amazing photographer, but this place is rather beautiful. It's not a huge restaurant, but a good enough size and the decor is really lovely. I guess it's that new kind of 'contemporary opulence' if you get my drift. Lots of gold, white marble, leather booth seating etc etc.

We went in and decided to have a drink at the bar - just so I had some time to take some pics! I have no idea what the bar man gave me. I just asked for something 'fruity and non-alcoholic' and I guess that's what I got. The staff were really friendly and although they had only been open a couple of days, they seemed to know what they were doing. I know we all have to have some time to get used to our jobs and settle in, but sometimes it can be frustrating when you go to a new restaurant and it's almost like the blind leading the blind!

We decided it was time to eat and so we were shown to our table by the host. She took us upstairs where there was more opulence and glamour! Bear with me, there is a reason why I keep saying this!

So, I know this is really really petty, but there was no cloakroom! I know, I'm a diva! I just found it odd that it looked like this lovely place and they had nowhere to hang our wet coats or umbrella (it was chucking it down!) - Come on, even Piccalinos has a cloakroom right? I know it's petty! Stop talking Emmaline!

Anyway, above is the menu. Sorry if you can't read it easily, but I will put a link for it here. The food is all about lots of small plates - tapas style if you will. We decided to order around 7 plates or so and the manager (who can I say was very very good) advised us to have around 6-8 plates between us.

So, here is our food. Let me see if I can get this right...

Blackened hake, fattoush & crab 13.50
Charcoal roasted fillet. quinoa. tomato. cucumber, crab & mint salad

This tasted ok. The fish was fresh but didn't seem to have a whole lot of flavour. I'm not too fussed though as I like white fish to be simple sometimes. The fattoush salad however was rather disappointing. I'm glad we didn't order this as a side - plus we played a game of 'try and find a piece of crab in the salad' ha ha!

Crunchy cauliflowers, tahini & spice (wf) 5.50
Spice baked florets. red pepper, smooth sesame & aubergine

Loved this! I adore cauliflower (and even though hubs hates it), he loved it too! Not too sure what the whole red pepper and aubergine this is though, must have been part of the sauce as in that little pot was just cauliflower.

Josper'd aubergine, citrus yoghurt (v) 5.50 
Charcoal roasted with za'tar, sesame & sumac. Topped with citrus yoghurt & pomegranate

This was really tasty. I really enjoyed this, but look at the size of it! I'm not sure if you can tell but there's only half an aubergine here and it's shrunk to an inch of it's life ha ha! £5.50 too! Hmm... a whole one might be better me thinks!

Persian spiced bread, fragrant textures & oil (v).  4.00
Torn with smashed vegetables & chickpeas 

This was quite thick and dry. Not too bad but not my thing I guess. I'm into more warm breads, this just was a little dry.

Ox cheek. cumin & pedro ximenez (wf) 10.00
Low 'n' slow cumin & sherry braised, pulled over crushed potatoes,with flash pickled red onion & citrus yoghurt

Obviously I didn't eat this one, but hubs did. He said it was really good. I think it's meant to be one of their specialties too.

 Za'tar fries 5.00

Big portion of fries, fresh, hot and tasted good. Thumbs up here, but erm... a fiver? yikes!

Hanout split prawns, smashed avocado {wf) 9.50
Seared king prawns with ras al hanout spices. crushed avocado. sesame & coriander

I love prawns and so they always taste pretty good to me (unless they are some shrivelled up frozen things from La Tasca ha ha!) These were ok too. Bit small though for the price.

Dessert Time!

The worlds smallest cappuccino and a fresh mint tea

Chocolate slab, burnt orange ripple (v) 6.00
A rich chocolate brownie, orange syrup & sweet whipped mascarpone

This was my third chocolate dessert in a week at this point (oh dear!) and I would say I felt like a bit of a connoisseur! It was really good as well. I couldn't eat too much because of the dairy but hubs really enjoyed it!

I had a lovely time in this restaurant. The food was pretty good and the staff were lovely. Plus I must say the manager was really helpful, professional and you could tell she had worked in some of the best restaurants out there. I don't know what it was though. It could have just been the fact that we went to Porta the night before and I felt like I was comparing it to that. The prawns here were no comparison to Porta and the same with the dessert. Although the portions were quite small for some of the dishes, I was definitely stuffed afterwards. I guess I just felt it was a little over priced. The final bill totted up to around £75 which to me was pretty steep. The food from the night before was £45 and it tasted completely different. Yes, I know it was Spanish, but the quality seemed so much higher. I would love you guys to try this place an let me know what you think. Maybe because it was still so new it just hadn't found it's 'thing' yet. I just felt it lacked something but I couldn't put my finger on it - For that price I would have preferred to go to Hawksmoor where I feel like we would have got more for our money. 

Well, I will stop being negative as I don't mean to be. It wasn't really bad, it just didn't move me I guess. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated! The decor was lovely, the food was good (ish), the staff were great... ok, stop rambling Emmaline! I'm sure you get where I'm coming from!

Thanks so much for reading,

Big love,

Em x