It was Mum’s birthday and Dad had to come up with the goods or he was in trouble. Absolutely no pressure whatsoever! Before we moved anywhere, Dad made a special breakfast including a few glasses of Bucks Fizz for Mum and fresh orange for yours truly. By the time we walked down to the train station, Mum was already a little tipsy. We got the train into Manchester and first for some culture. Yes, culture… every so often we do like to break up the endless eating and drinking with some culture 😉
So, first stop was the short walk from Piccadilly to the Manchester Art Gallery. We went to see “An Exhibition for Modern Living” and “Modern Japanese Design” and Mum was suitably impressed with Dad’s efforts so far! He’s pulling it off for once! Dad had booked a restaurant for lunch, but we had a bit of time to kill so we popped in to The Circus Tavern in Portland Street for a swift pint. It’s the smallest public house in the city, with one of the smallest bars in the country. Built in about 1790, it is also one of the oldest pubs in Manchester, although it only became a pub in about 1840. Mum has a thing for nice glasses so of course she made Dad buy one of the pint pots off the landlady, who was a very nice lady. Cheers!
Next and Dad’s pièce de résistance for the day, lunch. Dad wouldn’t say where we were going and when we finally walked around the corner and Mum could see the restaurant, did she get giddy. Sushi! Mum’s favourite food in the world. The restaurant in question was Samsi on Whitworth Street. Samsi opened in April 1993 and ever since then have been serving authentic Japanese food with a fresh approach, to the delight of Manchester’s diverse crowd as well as visitors from around the world. As we are particularly greedy family, we ordered miso soup, mixed tempura and a mixed platter of sushi, all washed down with a bottle of ice cold Asahi Super Dry and some white wine. Mum had a cup of traditional matcha green tea as well. We really liked this place and would definitely be back.
Next we were off to the cinema and Mum was extremely tipsy by this time, hiccup! It was Johnny Depp film and Dad stupidly asked Mum if she’d knew who Johnny Depp was, for some reason thinking that Poland was on another planet maybe and they didn’t get American actors in this far away galaxy. Mum would never let this go and would still be referring to it three and half years later! The film was Black Mass and it was that bad that we all took the opportunity for a well earned nap.