Michelin contender District is making fine dining more accessible with its new menu

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

If you’ve not been to District, the futurist Thai BBQ place on Oldham Street, it might well be because at a minimum of £50 for the smaller of its tasting menus (and £100 for the extended version), some could feel priced out of the party. But things are changing.

The Michelin contender - it made it into the Michelin Guide’s recommended places in the city earlier this year - is hoping that shifting its focus to a more standard set-up will open itself up to a new audience. In addition, chef and owner Ben Humphreys has completely overhauled the menu, adding a host of new dishes, and those that have been kept have been tweaked too.

But the main difference, basically, is that now you can order dishes separately. The M.E.N donned its Blade Runner trench coat and headed off to the Shoulder of Orion (will stop this now) last week to do some galactic exploring.

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The raw stone bass was a hit from the previous menu, previously served tartare-style, and now in little discs, pleasingly arranged in a bowl with a beyond-punchy nam jim sauce (equal parts sweet, sour, salty and spicy) and tiny crisp shards of dried purple yam. It’s tweaked and improved, somehow, because it was already great.

Lamb and mint gets a Thai twist, with the Herdwick lamb neck coming as a nam tok salad, the pieces of lamb barely shown barbecue coals - it’s rare, still bleating, and all the better for it - and then scattered with rings of crisp shallots.

Most remortgage worthy item on the menu goes to the Kagoshima wagyu massaman, at a palpitation-inducing £38, considering these are small plates. The expense is there in the sourcing, of course, with Kagoshima in Japan being the home of likely the best wagyu beef in the country - and therefore the