Click here to view a virtual tour of our restaurant Isinglass is an English restaurant. Not in the St George’s flag sense, but well-travelled enough to enjoy our real eccentricities. We put the food grown and reared in the lush countryside ringing Manchester on our menu, all year round. Simple as. Only that takes a lot more imagination and frankly old school cooking skill from our kitchen, some historical depth rather than banging out cooked-chill or frozen meals from a big food distributor. So when the last asparagus or yellow courgette is picked in Cheshire it’s off the menu. That’s why it’s not laminated. And that’s why the food is fresh, cooked to enhance not mask it’s natural flavours. We are not Tuscan or a Mediteranean wannabe. Follow a Pisan gran’s recipe slavishly using supermarket finest and it will still not taste the same under Manchester’s slate grey sky. We serve food for our climate, field fresh Chat Moss salad in summer, slow-cooked boiled beef and baby carrots coming in the cold. Food that satisfies, lingers and reconnects with youthful memory. Direct from fields not a factory. How we came about: We took a last century bakery on a busy shopping street, ripped out a bad retro seventies shell and room size shipyard weld oven, and eight skips later a period townhouse was left. Its an interior under-designed to relax not intimidate, full of those high ceilings, wood floors, original fireplaces and cooking ranges beloved of the South Manchester housing boom. Where (the hell) are we: Urmston. Just paltry minutes away from Chorlton and the main arterial A56 or M60 but admittedly a location wild card for the city-centric. We’ve become a spiritual home for Chorlton & Didsbury exiles, drawn to Urmston’s whole tree-lined streets of unrenovated period property and league-topping schools yet still pining for free trade coffee. And we’re grateful that Urmston’s finest have welcomed a bit more variety to their many dining out options.