#3. Canto, Ancoats: Where the food magic is as good as the weekend vibes.
Country: Portugal. Rating: 9
Ooof, it’s a long time since I crashed a party. Since I made someone else knock on the door and blag our way in (because I am never going to do that, no matter how old I get). Since the feeling you get when a door opens and warm air washes onto the street, and with it the hum and beat and noise of 100 people having a good time – and the adrenalin kicks in and you’re a kid again, pushing your way in to yet another messy house party.
But that was the end of the night.
The reason I forgot my nerves and skittered along an unfamiliar front path glittering with frost, was how it started.
And it started with a similar feeling: walking into Canto on a Saturday night for a 9pm table and, as the doors opened, being met with heat and noise and music and buzz, and the sense that, hey, we might not be here for a long time but we’re definitely here for a good time. Etc.
Special notice should be paid to the service at Canto. In the open kitchen, at the bar, on the floor - servers are in constant motion, moving with a kind of balletic grace that sees food cooked, drinks poured and plates delivered without the banging, crashing and tripping that’s high risk in a place so packed with people. They’d stop by our table, ask the right questions, and return, not long later, with small plate after small plate of perfectly formed tapas: oiled and salted padron peppers, chargrilled chicken, monkfish, roasted cauliflower and lentils…
I wasn’t sure about Canto, before this night. It didn’t impress Jay Rayner when it opened. It’s the younger sibling of El Gato Negro, a place I wanted to but never quite loved. I swear it’s Portuguese, but Canto calls itself “Mediterranean-inspired,” which feels like someone in marketing hedging their bets. And the clientele is a mash-up of athleisure-attired Ancoats’ finest, with their fluffy little dogs on glittering strings, the super glammed up, peering down from their Manolo heights, or the expensively, studiously dressed down (two words: beige cashmere).
But it works. I’ve not been somewhere so good in such a long time, that does the food magic as well as it does the weekend vibes. It wasn’t too much; the balance is near-on perfect.
And the cocktails – powering us on to that party beyond. To that moment of will-we-won’t-we; to the dancing in a stranger’s kitchen.
To that feeling I still get and will never tire of: turn it up, babe, this one’s my favourite tune.
