“Food that has a bit of a story to it is far more interesting than food that doesn’t,” says Mary-Ellen McTague, the Bury-born former Great British Menu star, chef-patron of restaurants like Aumbry in Prestwich and The Creameries in Chorlton and alumnus of Heston Blumenthal’s three Michelin starred The Fat Duck.
The food at Pip, her new place – on the ground floor of the newly-opened Treehouse Hotel Manchester – will have a story. Some of it might even be a story that goes back a bit.
“The last year I was working with Heston was spent doing historical research and development, my first proper exposure to food history,” she says.
“I met amazing food historians at Hampton Court Palace, and got introduced to amazing, incredible texts and got an understanding of how our social history and food history are interconnected.”
Fascinated with how seismic events like the industrial revolution affected how Britons ate – as the rural populations migrated to the cities, leaving farming and agriculture sorely impoverished – history began informing her own endeavours in the kitchen.
So while there’s probably not going to be a Henry VIII-style 20-bird roast with accompanying mead flight, the Pip menu will feature numerous subtle nods to British culinary heritage among all the various deliciousness.
There will always be fantastic pies and puddings on the menu, for example. Luxurious trifles with seasonally changing fruit and preserved fruits in the winter. Served with the signature lamb hotpot will be an oyster ketchup, inspired by a time when abundant oysters were used as seasoning because salt was too expensive.
“I love hot pot,” she says. “I’m a bit obsessed with it. Partly because my mum used to make it, so it has a nostalgic value for me. We slow cook the lamb, make a separate sauce with the bones and the trim, then we cook the carrots and potatoes separately in lamb fat and we put it all back together.”
“It’s way more faff than you’d do at home,” she jokes. Like the increasing majority of new openings, Pip will be all about seasonal food and using local suppliers, not least to align with Treehouse’s commitment to sustainability, something that was key when Mary-Ellen agreed to join the project.
The Treehouse brand – there’s another hotel in London too – aligns itself strongly with notions of sustainability, from its reclaimed furnishings to working with B Corp certified alcohol brands.
In turn, long-established local wholesaler Organic North and the Cinderwood market garden in Cheshire will be supplying Pip’s fresh produce, with Swaledale and Littlewoods providing for the carnivores.
“It’s why I wanted to work with them,” Mary-Ellen says. “It’s important to me. We’re going to try and work in a really low waste way, repurposing our byproducts. We wouldn’t say we’re zero waste, but we’re trying to get as close as possible. It’s challenging, complicated, but I think it’s important to try and make it work.”
After more than two years since the opening of the Treehouse in Manchester was first announced, during which Mary-Ellen has buffed and polished her debut menu to a gleaming shine (it’ll be an all-day offering, breakfast, lunch and dinner) the beginning of it all is finally here, with another restaurant further up the building coming from Madre’s Sam Grainger later this year, alongside a rooftop bar curated by Volta and Electrik’s Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford.
“This is about the start of things, about potential and opportunity, which is why we’re called Pip,” she says. “There’s a hopeful sentiment to it.”
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