Fit for a Brit

At Isinglass, chef Lisa Walker puts a new spin on British cuisine

Isinglass is the predecessor of gelatin. Obtained from a sturgeon’s swim bladder, it was used to thicken desserts in Edwardian times. Isinglass (46 Flixton Road, Urmston, 0161.749.8400) is also an award-winning restaurant in Manchester, England, that lives up to its obscure, throwback name by exemplifying the sturdiness and elegance of fine British cooking, while reflecting a certain scholarship and loopy artistry that is all its own.

“I get really passionate about food,” says chef Lisa Walker, 37, on a chilly morning at the foot of the Pennines, the low-rising mountains of northern England. Walker originally studied to be a criminal psychologist but trained as a chef at age 24, commuting on a borrowed Harley between San Francisco and the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, in California’s Napa Valley.

A decade later, the England native is back home, crafting clever dishes like venison in chocolate and port, and roast pheasant with quince. “I’m trying to get us passionate about British food again,” she explains.

Located in the leafy neighborhood of Urmston, the handsome Victorian that houses Isinglass recently received a new chocolate-and-cream façade. Inside, it is warmly lit and cheerily busy. In the kitchen, Walker’s sous chef and a young chef-in-training prep noisily, banging pots and listening to the radio. Meanwhile, out in the quiet dining room, Walker talks about food with a scholar’s heart and an artist’s eye. “You can’t make your Italian gran’s recipes under the slate-gray skies of Manchester,” says Walker, who was named Manchester’s Chef of the Year at the city’s annual Food and Drink Festival in 2005. “And the thing is, you don’t need to. Britain has a wonderful food heritage.”

Walker puts her menu where her mouth is, reveling in that heritage by championing local and seasonal food. Of her tiny staff, she says, “We bounce ideas around and formulate menus according to what’s in season, what will sell, and we can get hold of. We’ve made ‘safe’ menus: classic sherry trifle desserts the English call ‘pudds,’ duck breast on crisply browned bubble and squeak [a vegetable and potato patty] adorned with a damson vodka jam. But we’ve also written ‘unsafe’ menus. Pig’s ears? Delicious. Then there were gruel fritters: a poorhouse dish with nettles and sorrel. It’s vegan, but it tastes like cheese. Fantastic.”

As British agriculture declines (100,000 acres of farmland are eaten up by development every year), restaurants like Isinglass have made locally sourced and artisanal fare the “it” cuisine in England. “British food,” she says. “It’s just amazing.”

Getting There: Continental offers daily nonstop service to Manchester from its hub in New York/Newark.

Five to Try

1 Luso. 63 Bridge St., 0161.839.5550. Expertly prepared entrées from salt cod to tempuras and piri-piri reflect colonial influences on Portuguese cuisine. Fresh flowers and attentive staff add to the experience.

2 The River Restaurant. The Lowry Hotel. 50 Dearmans Place, 0161.827.4000. German wunder-chef Eyck Zimmer crafts fine modern British cuisine like Cheshire beef with horseradish mash and Welsh salt-marsh lamb with carrots and chervil. Sit on the balcony to watch rowers on the Irwell.

3 Grado. New York St., 0161.238.9790. Celebrity chef Paul Heathcote brings smooth northern Spanish cuisine to Piccadilly Square. Spanish wines and sherries accompany spit-roasted meats right off the coals, or a flourish of tapas. Tip: try the pine nut–stuffed sardines.

4 Chaophrya. Chapel Walks (off Cross Street), 0161.832.8342. Lounge on silk divans amid opulent Victorian architecture while enjoying artfully crafted classic Thai dishes like sweet corn cake appetizers, black mushrooms on bamboo skewers, tangy lime-chili papaya salad, and basil-infused sea bass grilled in banana leaves.

5 Moso Moso. 403-419 Oxford Road, 0161.273.3373. The menu in this glamorous 200-seat space offers 429 scrupulously authentic pan-Chinese and Thai dishes. Try fish lips and shredded duck, or between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., go for dim sum. — E.K.

Cheeky Chips

Potatoes — plank-cut and twice fried. Golden and salty outside, hot and floury inside. Though Americans call them french fries, they’re “chips” to the British, who eat 38,000 metric tons (that’s 83,752,000 pounds) of them a week. Nothing says “British pub” like a chip doused in curry. More sweet than spicy, a chip curry is fruity, with a whiff of turmeric. Hot and runny, it’s ladled like gravy right over the chips or coyly segregated in a ramekin on the side. The world eats them at these three places:

The Rose and Crown. Graianrhyd, Llanarmon yn Lal, Mold, Denbighshire, Wales. An hour from Manchester yet splendidly rural, the Rose and Crown serves chips served doused with a heady curry, brought out steaming on a groaning platter. theroseandcrownpub.co.uk

The George and Dragon. Barcelona. Patates fregides is Catalan for chips, and at this Spanish location, they’re served with a chunky curry. In the vaulted, wood-lined cavern of the George, Catalan meets Kashmir via Keswick. Hand-pulled Fuller’s London Pride and Dry Blackthorn Cider complete the happy union. georgeanddragon-bcn.com

Wolf Tone’s Pub at the Blackthorne Inn. Upperville, Va. Located about an hour west of Washington, D.C., in Virginia’s wine-and-horse country, the Blackthorne Inn was once owned by George Washington. Now, it serves slab-cut chips with a redolent, appley curry. blackthorne-inn.com — E.K.