We’re sat having a cocktail when I receive a message from a Mancunian friend saying that I’ve been a tourist for two days, as she follows my movements on social media from Mulligans to Tast to Blinker to Pollen back to Mulligans and now to Schofields, supposedly the UK’s best cocktail bar. I honestly thought we were doing okay. We got on to the subject of dinner and I ask her if Madre is any good. She doesn’t know: apparently she only goes Birria Brothers for tacos. For what it’s worth Louis would make a shite tour guide in her home city, unlike me, an excellent and experienced one available at £240 per hour.
We go Madre, a fact you may have gathered from the title of this piece, walking the fifteen or so minutes that everywhere in this city seems to take to get anywhere to the restaurant in Piccadilly. Inside it looks like an Edward Hopper painting, striking and angular, bathed in sultry neon which is offset by thick bands of light. It’s January when we are there and it’s 50% off tacos, a fact had we known that afternoon would have saved the googling and messages. Our order is easy; too many tacos and some topotos sharing thingy which comes with just about every topotos topper. They are pretty good; tortillas fried to a hard golden, guacamole that is bright with lime and hot with chilli. Refried beans in a bowl that’s at least double the size it needs to be, three really good salsas that show attention to detail and a knack for buying the best Mexican ingredients with little care for carbon footprint.
The tacos are good. A kind of modern take first really seen by Breddos Tacos in Clerkenwell that has spilled out nationwide since. It means that they have room to play where they like; chorizo is a kind of smashed patty wearing a dollop of soured cream and diced onion, whilst halloumi arrives under a litter of a tamed salsa matcha, fried green onion, and salsa verde. They build around textures and tastes, not by any rule book. And they need the salsas, the flavour boosters, the little hits of chilli to lift it up, right down to covering the adobo chicken with the hottest one to mask the pickled cabbage. The only one which doesn’t is the birria which comes with its own pot of braising liquid that’s like liquid OXO cubes. I adore them; the soft beef encased in a taco bound together in a cover of cheese crust. Sophie thinks they are too greasy and gives me hers. I repay her by leaving the 10 pound 11 oz bowl of refried beans to her.
The bill with a couple of cocktails is less than seventy quid, the service tight and the food nice, if not spectacular. Madre was heaving and it was easy to see why. It’s accessible, fun, unpretentious, the kind of casual which would work in any city. We stand to leave to head to Speak in Code as a little fluffy white dog mounts the sofa whilst his owner is the loo. I ask him what he’s ordered. No idea. I never could understand the Mancunian accent.
7/10
