First taste of new sensational spring menu at the River Restaurant, The Lowry Hotel

Salford’s five-star Lowry Hotel’s two AA Rosette River Restaurant has launched a new spring a la carte menu with a strong emphasis on season and the sourcing of local produce.

Executive head chef Andrew Green has brought a raft of of fresh vibrant flavours reflecting the availability of the new season’s ingredients to the chic, contemporary dining room overlooking the River Irwell and Santiago Calatrava’s Trinity Bridge linking the hotel with its Manchester bank.

Championing great northern suppliers with his ethos of using only exceptional quality regional ingredients, Andrew has devised an impressive array of modern British dishes for the new menu, which was launched at a press preview this week.

It comprises just seven starters and six main courses, all of them displaying a lightness of touch and imaginative understanding of harmonious flavours and hedgerow foraging.

“We put together the new a la carte menu to reflect the colourful, refreshed feel of Spring,” said Andrew. “I wanted to create lighter dishes that captured those connotations, encouraging our diners to embrace the long evenings.

“Our chain of suppliers delivers top quality, award-winning produce for our kitchen to work with, allowing us to select the very best cuts of meat and thriving crops to reflect the season for the new spring menu.”

The menu launch showcased a tasting of starters and main courses rounded off with the sweet-sour piquancy of Yorkshire rhubarb and custard.

Yorkshire also figured in the first starter presented – new season’s Yorkshire asparagus served with soft, fluffy burrata mousse, a quail egg and purées of balsamic shallot and avocado.

Next, a delicate crab tian was complimented simply by vegetable spaghetti, cucumber and caviar. Other menu starter options include pressed wild rabbit with rhubarb, leeks, sorrel and brioche shards and beetroot-cured salmon with fennel chutney, crayfish mousse, dandelion and lemon purée.

The mains offered featured just-so pan-fried sea bass with herb gnocchi, shards of crisp Iberico ham, sea beets and beurre blanc and a strikingly attractive cannon of spring lamb from Mettrick’s of Glossop came with pea and nettle purée, Jersey royals, aubergine caviar, cumin jus and mint oil.

The main course menu also offers Cheshire aged beef fillet with courgette rosti, purple broccoli, artichoke and Madeira jus; sesame seared tuna, pak choi, heritage carrot, garlic textures and squid ink aioli; loin of monkfish, lentils, kale, broadband and tomato vierge and celeriac and truffle barley risotto with forelle pear, wild mushrooms and cep foam.

The seasonal menu, which will be changed quarterly, is available for lunch and dinner.  Starters average around £10, mains around £23.

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