Moon Under Water review

Like Top Gear we frequently get criticised for reviewing the medium to top end of our chosen market. This is fine by us because it shows we're doing our job right. There really is very little to be said when writing about the 'meal deal, bacon sandwich and hot drink for £1.20' at the local sandwich shop.

To critically judge you really need to be judging something that somebody cared about creating. Crap is crap, there are rarely nuances of crap.

But occasionally Confidential deigns to lower itself to reviewing the, to euphemise, 'better value' places. And some of these deserve praise: places such as Ning, Tampopo, Rice and Croma are models of their kind.

We've never done Wetherspoons though. With plans to create another 200 pubs to add to the existing 753 across the country, including a new one for Didsbury, we decided to sample the northern original: the Moon Under Water. So can the lovable-ish chain match up to a real local?

If you want pubs to impress then this place does on scale. Dropped into a former cinema, The Deansgate Picturehouse, it's a pub pulled and stretched to the outer limits of reason. In 1995 when it opened, Wetherspoons dubbed it the 'biggest pub in Britain': it might still be unless there's an aircraft hangar conversion somewhere.

Despite this scale, Wetherspoons have kept the place spick and span and given it the odd new paintjob too.

The ales are top class, as they are across the group generally. I had a guest ale from Dorset called Ammonite. Even in the lexicon of let's-be-wacky-with-beer names beloved of micro-breweries, this title is curious. Naming something to drink after a dry old fossil doesn't seem too clever. Yet this was delicious, a deep amber-coloured beauty.

The handy Wetherspoons guest ale list said ludicrously that it had 'undertones of chocolate and pine-emerging towards the finish'. Ludicrous but true. British ale is becoming more and more the distinctive UK food and drink product for which we can have boundless pride.

The menu is different. Unlike the variety on the ale list this seems drawn up by committee. It includes British basics playing the safe staples with 'foreigners' such as ciabatta, pasta and nachos.

I went for the 8oz sirloin steak (£8.99) with chips, tomato, peas and mushroom. The steak came medium rare as requested. The large mushroom with it came medium rare as well. This I hadn't asked for. The mushroom was uncooked in the middle. It was fresh as though just picked. I swear it gave a little squeak of 'ouch' and shifted slightly when I cut into it. Have a look at the picture.

I love raw mushrooms and often raid the veg cupboard and nibble on them between meals, so I wasn't too bothered. But it showed a slapdash attitude in the kitchen. As did the grim, over-cooked stale chips. The steak was a poor quality cut too, with a weird flavour that ran away as quickly as you'd put the flesh in your mouth. Seems you get what you pay for.

For pudding I had the Bramley apple, pear and raspberry crumble with custard (£2.99). This was all right. I'm not sure it was made on the premises but it was solidly sweet, with the correct textures and a nice mix of fruit.

Service was efficient rather than friendly. It was a comfortable experience apart from being sat in the endless main room of the old cinema auditorium.

And therein lies the problem with this chain.

All Wetherspoons are too big. It's their defining characteristic.

The pubs do so much right with regard to music policy, beers, bargain meals, expanatory literature, events and so forth but because the company needs economies of scale to make it all pay it loses a key pub essential, intimacy.

As stated above, the Moon Under Water used to advertise itself as the biggest pub in Britain which was totally missing the point. The most over-used pub adjective is 'cosy'. You can see why because a pub is a public house, a home from home. Cosy seems to fit despite its ubiquity. No Wetherspoons is ever cosy. Or intimate. Or a home from home. The Moon Under Water title comes from the writer George Orwell who thought it the perfect pub name and defined cosiness as one of key characteristics necessary in a British pub.

In some ways the company that Tim Martin runs is a great success and has also saved lots of landmark buildings in UK towns and cities from the wreckers ball but it's had to compromise the principles of what truly makes a pub.

There's the unintended consequence as well, those economies of scale allow Wetherspoons to undercut the prices in the smaller surrounding pubs which then struggle to survive. Thus the clone zone of the high street gets reinforced as those ultimate centres of maverick civic identity the pubs become another Clarks shoe shop, another Boots, with graduate training programmes and identikit menus.

Still that raw mushroom has given me an idea. Along with the clever Guest Ales List with tasting notes at Wetherspoons, won't someone do later in the year a Guest Fungus List, get maybe twenty varieties in, do a menu, serve 'em raw and cooked. I'll review that at any price.

Rating:	12/20
Breakdown:	2/5 food 4/5 drinks 3/5 service 3/5 ambience
Address:	Moon Under Water 68-74 Deansgate, City, M3 2FN 0161 834 5882

Venues are rated against the best examples of their kind: fine dining against the best fine dining, cafes against the best cafes. Following on from this the scores represent: 1-5 saw your leg off and eat it, 6-9 get a DVD, 10-11 if you must, 12-13 if you’re passing,14-15 worth a trip,16-17 very good, 17-18 exceptional, 19 pure quality, 20 perfect. More than 20: Gordo gets carried away