This stylish addition to Manchester’s Corn Exchange is the first English branch of Alston’s award-winning Glaswegian restaurant, where quality steak is paired with gins from across the globe. It’s an attractive 160-cover space following a chic black and white colour scheme, and features a handsome bespoke marble bar with yellow-backed lights, a spacious dining area, and a stand-out mural by Manchester-based street artist Tankpetrol.
You can choose to begin your dining experience with a range of bites or starters, including pork scratchings dusted in cayenne pepper. Pick something light to counter the rich meats to follow, such as scallops and cucumber with a lime aioli and pickled mustard seeds. Another choice is the smoked salmon served with marinated asparagus and salmon roe on a rye crispbread, and then drizzled with sorrel vinaigrette.
The latter of the menu focuses predominantly on Tweed Valley steak: eight different cuts selected from the top one per cent of Scottish beef and dry hung for 35 days before being cooked in specialist Montague ovens. As well as classic fillets, sirloins, T-bones and Chateaubriands, the menu offers more unusual cuts.
Our sharing platter of flank, hanger and flat-iron was superb value, the generous steaks cooked perfectly medium rare and full of robust beefy flavour, served with crisp, skin-on chips and buttery, tarragon-spiked béarnaise. If you’d like to try the quality meat roasted, Alston Bar & Beef Manchester also does Sunday Roasts with all the expected trimmings.
Alston’s bar is one of the city’s first to produce its own cold-compound gins, created to accompany the steaks, as well as offering 58 other gins including local brands such as Manchester Three Rivers, Thomas Dakin and Manchester Gin. With all that gin, you’d likely get up to some shenanigans, so pop by Alston Bar & Beef Manchester for cabaret evenings or open mic nights on Thursdays. In all, it’s a winning combination.