TOM PARKER BOWLES warms to a cosy hideaway in Manchester serving comfort food of the highest calibre By TOM PARKER BOWLES FOR YOU MAGAZINE Published: 08:01, 28 December 2024 | Updated: 08:01, 28 December 2024 e-mail View comments It takes a while to find The Spärrows, hidden away behind a small metal door beneath an old railway arch in a Manchester backstreet. The night is bitterly cold, and to walk inside, after first ringing the bell, is to plunge headfirst into the warmest, most hospitable of embraces. Despite the breeze-block and industrial-steel décor, the place has an atmosphere so thick and sweet you could slather it on toast.
Because The Spärrows is all about unabashed, old-fashioned succour, the sort of food that girds the belly and soothes the soul. The sort of food that makes you happy to be alive. The stars here are spätzle, those fine Swabian noodles, made fresh every day.
And dear god they’re good, plump and pouting, but light too, with just the right amount of bite. We eat them smothered in Emmenthal cheese and silken, slow-braised onions, both quietly elegant and splendidly hearty, and then drenched in the sort of intense tomato sauce that sings of summers long past. Tom rates The Spärrows for ‘the warmest, most hospitable of embraces’ But that’s not all.
For this is a menu filled with comfort food of the highest calibre: a high-altitude, Middle-European paean to stodge, fat and unabashed delight. There’s beef goulash, fragrant with cumin a.
