Prawn stars: how the Bar Shrimp trio are shaking up Manchester’s cocktail scene

Bar Shrimp’s ‘it’s a bar and we do seafood’ tagline leaves little room for misinterpretation, but it might raise a few eyebrows. Cocktails and fish are not obvious bedfellows. But Joseph Otway, Richard Cossins and Daniel Craig Martin don’t do obvious.

Having worked at some of the best restaurants in the world - they met at famed New York State farm-to-table restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns - the trio have been ploughing their own furrow (sometimes literally) in and around Manchester for the past five years or so.

Launched a few months ago, Bar Shrimp follows the success of growing operation Cinderwood Market Garden, natural wine bar FLAWD and Higher Ground. The latter is the trio’s most high profile and, on paper, at least, most conventional project: a bistro of sorts in Manchester’s Chinatown enclave with a focus on regenerative local produce, the vast majority of which is sourced from Cinderwood, which is a little over an hour’s drive away in Nantwich, Cheshire.

Currently ranked 36th on Restaurant’s list of the top 100 places to eat in the UK, Higher Ground is quietly revolutionary in that it offers produce and cooking that’s right up there with the very best in the UK but at a fraction of the cost of comparable establishments. Why it remains overlooked by Michelin is a mystery.

Drawing influence from New York, Scandinavia and the neo-bistros of Paris, its format and service style is also out of step with the quality of the food and hospitality being offered. Higher Ground is stripped back, eschewing a tasting menu in favour of a la carte and a seasonal feasting menu priced at £40 a head at lunchtime and £65 in the evening. These strikingly low prices are achieved through a combination of growing their own produce, working with local suppliers to secure whole animals, and a relatively low rent - Higher Ground is close to Manchester Piccadilly Station, but few would consider it a prime location.

Accessibility is the watchword for Otway, Cossins and Craig Martin and Bar Shrimp, which is housed in the same building as Higher Ground, is no different. With the exception of caviar, no dishes break the £20 mark, and some are even under a fiver including devilled eggs with brown crab and trout roe. A dexter beef burger costs £12.50, cocktails range from £13 to £14 and pints start at £6.50.

“Our background is serious fine dining, which is, if we’re being honest about things, rarely fun,” says Cossins, who is best known in the UK for his stint working front of house at Simon Rogan’s London restaurants Roganic and Fera. “This project is about creating a space in which people can enjoy themselves and forget about what’s going on outside.”

“The price point was deliberately kept low to avoid the stigma of an expensive seafood bar, especially in the current climate,” adds Otway, the chef of the trio and an alumnus of many a top kitchen including Stockport’s Where The Light Gets In and Copenhagen’s Relæ.

Shrimp’s cocktail

But why seafood? The theme and menu at Bar Shrimp build on the popularity of dishes made with top quality British seafood at Higher Ground, which were often available only as specials in limited quantities.

“We are lucky enough to have access to some amazing produce largely from Cornwall and Scotland. We sold out of stuff a lot, which gave us the confidence to make it our focus,” Otway continues. “A lot of the development work had already been done; we felt the dishes were strong enough to have their own concept and their lightness also suited the bar setting.

Led by Craig Martin, a US-born service and drinks specialist who previously worked at Noma, the cocktail list marks the first time the group has properly explored mixology, with both Higher Ground and FLAWD placing a greater emphasis on wine. What sets the programme apart from most restaurant cocktail offerings is its focus on niche drinks producers who follow principles similar to those of low-intervention winemakers. The bar team also works closely with the kitchen, drawing on many of the same fresh and preserved ingredients.

I would characterise our approach as being ingredient-driven,” Craig Martin says. “We don’t like over-manipulation; we’re not using a lot of the more specialist techniques used by other cocktail bars. It’s pretty simple stuff really.”

Two drinks that sum up Bar Shrimp are the Marigold Gimlet made with homemade marigold syrup; and the Dabinett Apple, a carbonated cocktail using an eau de vie made especially by Gloucestershire’s Capreolus Distillery. Those after something a bit more frivolous can choose from a small range of ‘shots’, including Disco Ball (mezcal, green and yellow chartreuse); and Lemon Drop (vodka, curaçao and lemon).

A place to let your hair down

Bar Shrimp isn’t being billed as a listening bar, but it certainly has some of the hallmarks of one - not least its high-end, ruinously expensive UK-manufactured sound system, cutting edge acoustic insulation and a dedicated music director. The trio are so plugged into the Manchester scene that the reveal for Bar Shrimp didn’t land in a local news article or restaurant trade website, but on BBC Radio 6 Music, which is broadcast just a few miles away at MediaCity in Salford.

People coming to Bar Shrimp with differing expectations - some come for the music, some come for the food, and some come to drink - has thrown up a few challenges but the city has largely got it.

“It helps that Manchester is used to and favours informal experiences,” Cossins says. “We have a few hours in the evening during which we’re more focused on food service then we switch over to drinks and turn the music up. But we’re very flexible. We feel like we’re delivering for both diners and the more casual drinking crowd.”

That said, Otway is toying with the idea of introducing some larger sharing dishes - including whole fish - to better cater for the small proportion of diners that are looking for more of a conventional restaurant experience.

Connected but distinct

Though Bar Shrimp is a venue in its own right, the project does address the issue of Higher Ground not having a bar. The trio admit that not having a place for guests to go before or after dinner was “a bit of a headache”, particularly at the weekends when we try and turn most tables. It was also frustrating to lose out on business, with the restaurant constantly sending people to other places to drink.

So, when the lease came up unexpectedly for the site around this time last year, they jumped at the chance to take it on. Previously home to a cafe, the space - through which the team but not guests can now access Higher Ground - was a bit of a state. “One of the big appeals was that it had a kitchen. It seemed okay when we first looked at it but when we got in there properly, we realised that it all needed to be stripped out,” Otway says. “The previous tenant also appears to have destroyed the extraction system, which was a nice touch.”

A growing business

The trio might have started out in quite a low key way - FLAWD didn’t have a proper kitchen when it launched in the early days of the business - but are now major players on Manchester’s scene. Cinderwood Market Garden supplies some of the city’s other top places to eat including Elnecot and the Michelin-starred Skof and even places that are much further afield like the Edinburgh-based Timberyard and Montrose.

Following an amicable parting of ways with their grower and business partner earlier this year, they have taken full control of the site, integrating it fully into their restaurant company to gain a better handle on costs. This move has coincided with a vintage year for the farm, largely thanks to ideal growing weather in the first half of the year.

While the integration doesn’t make a huge difference in real terms, they have found some efficiencies in bringing the two businesses together. “It definitely makes Cinderwood’s books look better,” says Otway. “We’ve finally reached positive cashflow, which has allowed us to make some small infrastructure investments. We’ve also changed the way we work with other restaurants - focusing on fewer, stronger relationships. At one point, we were running around delivering tiny amounts to lots of places, which just wasn’t efficient.”

Northern exposure

Manchester’s restaurant scene is booming, but that’s something of a double-edged sword for operators. Rents are increasing rapidly and competition for guests is intense. “The city is vibrant but there is probably now oversupply of restaurants,” says Craig Martin. “Weekends are busy but midweek covers are harder to come by.”

But the trio - who came close to opening restaurants in New York and Copenhagen prior to settling on Manchester - aren’t going anywhere.

“We’re dedicated to this city and maintaining our core clientele here,” Cossins says. “Manchester is a place that suits our lifestyle and ambitions, and it’s also shaped the way we run our restaurants. We love it here.”