Does your town need luxury dining?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/jan/08/does-your-town-need-luxury-dining

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My prediction for 2013? This year, you will read a lot about food in Manchester. Not all of it will be true. The launch of Living Ventures' ambitious Manchester House and Simon Rogan's new restaurants at the city's grand Midland Hotel will be taken as evidence that, gastronomically, Manchester has finally arrived. But arrived where, exactly?<br /><br />As a native son, I worry that the city will be sold short. More than that, I worry that in their well-padded way, these venues will encapsulate a fundamentally meek, Michelin-dictated vision of "fine dining" which, particularly in a city such as Manchester, already feels outdated. It is a problem common to all regional capitals.

Partly, I resent the lack of imagination on display. L'Enclume is an exceptional restaurant, a revelatory experience, owned by a chef who has proved that he can run a serious restaurant remotely with Roganic. That is what I hoped Manchester would get. There were rumours that Rogan was going to open in the Northern Quarter. I had visions of bleeding-edge food in a stark, whitewashed room, high-minded cooking that might justify a hefty price tag. That is what this self-styled original, modern city deserves: something challenging and unique, a Factory Records of food, a small, boutique operation embedded in the fabric of the city.

In reality, Rogan's outreach team will be based in a swanky hotel, serving food across both a 50-cover fine dining restaurant and a "more informal, casual and contemporary" 150-seater. Will the food be nice? Possibly. Will it be extraordinary? Given the scale of that operation, I doubt it. L'Enclume will remain Rogan's flagship, must-visit destination, while this second-best management contract will play out reasonably successfully without shaking anyone to their gastronomic core.

Maybe these restaurants aren't meant to. Dynamic local restaurateur Tim Bacon is determined that Manchester House will bring a Michelin star back to the city centre (the last was held by the Midland in the early 1980s). But what does that mean? The head chef at Manchester House, Aiden Byrne, is clearly talented, but - while he is talking up this new venture's theatricality - he has previously shown little interest in testing boundaries and scaring horses. If Manchester House takes a safety-first route to Michelin stardom, so what? It will offer a comfortably familiar fine dining experience to local and visiting professionals - the BBC's arrival, I'm told, has given the local restaurant industry a real boost, financially - but, again, it will add nothing profound to the city.

The question is, what sort of restaurants do cities want? Ideally, Rogan and Byrne's restaurants would be so startlingly original that they would stand alone on the international scene, or embody Manchester's socio-cultural terroir in their style and food. Either outcome is unlikely.

If, instead, these new restaurants broadly conform to fine dining type - taking their places in a homogenised global milieu of high-end restaurants - they will be the crowning glory of a 15 year regeneration jag that has turned Manchester city centre into a comparatively polite, shiny, well-ordered place, but one that increasingly lacks character. Certainly, Rogan wants to introduce a further level of refinement to a city which has historically, after a long week of hard graft, been far more interested in getting wrecked. "Overall," he said, when the Midland opening was announced, "the Manchester dining scene has been quite casual and bar-driven, but this is a great opportunity to set the trend for luxury dining, and the city is definitely ready for it."

But is it? Is anywhere? And why? Does every major city need a totemic posh restaurant as part of its portfolio of business and tourist attractions? Or, particularly in these straitened times, is there scope in Manchester, Cardiff, Liverpool or Glasgow - all fiercely independent cities with a lot going on in music, nightlife, sport, the arts - to take vocal pride in their grassroots food cultures rather than importing big names or launching bullish projects in pursuit of what? Michelin approval?

The real story in Manchester right now is not Simon Rogan and Aiden Byrne, but that, for the first time in living memory, the city has a small network of, generally, independent one-offs where you can eat well. I won't list them all. If you're interested, follow the links embedded in this paragraph. But, in their different relatively democratic ways (ranging from burritos to beer-focused dining, good burgers to dosa), these venues seem, to me, far more in keeping with not just Manchester's spirit, but also the hopefully meaningful shift that is under way nationally, from overpriced Michelin flummery to more affordable kicks. This isn't necessarily about roughing it, either. Cicchetti is pretty glam, but it is also in a department store, is a place you would drop-in, and is somewhere where you can eat, pretty handsomely, for £30 a head.

To me, that sounds like the future. Of course, the nation needs a handful of off-the-wall, envelope-pushing restaurants. Save up, go to L'Enclume. It's ace. But, I suspect, that is not what Manchester will get. I sincerely hope I'm proved wrong, but I imagine Manchester will, instead, get slickly accomplished fine dining. Echoes of daring. Pleasure, but few genuine thrills. At astronomical prices. Who could get excited about that?