Quill

What a delicious and interesting meal. You should get yourself to Quill while the two courses and a glass of prosecco for £20.16 is still on. I think (hope!) that the two courses for £19.95 continues throughout the year as well.
Natalie W and I arrived a little early for our booked table, so our lovely hostess showed us to the bar and got us some glasses of wine. We admired the décor of the place — though very dark and littered with dead birds (you’ll understand if you go…) it’s really stunning inside.
When we went to our table the staff seemed to be thrown off by the rest of our party not having arrived and so we felt a bit ignored and had to ask for a menu.
The amuse bouche was a box of eggs filled with (I think) chicken liver parfait/​pâté. This was very delicious, with a blood orange jelly on top. Accompanied by bread that was still warm and two types of butter — salted and Marmite. Yes, Marmite butter. It was amazing. The salted butter didn’t really get a look in for me.
For my starter (or first chapter, as per the menu) I went for pigeon. Similar to Natalie, I found this wasn’t the most memorable or exciting of dishes, although it looked great. It tasted like any other cured meat really, which is to say delicious but nothing to write home about. Also the cabbage on top tasted very, very bitter to me, though I imagine that’s a personal taste thing.
For my main/​second chapter I had sea bream. This came presented beautifully with a fillet of sea bream and a collection of veg including purple potatoes, tender stem broccoli, sweetcorn, and radishes. It got a whole lot more exciting when the waiter poured over the cooking broth, which included chorizo and cockles. This whole dish was delicious, I couldn’t fault a single thing. I may or may not have drank the broth from the bowl (I definitely did).
I didn’t go for a dessert but instead chose a cocktail. It was expensive, took ages to arrive, and didn’t taste particularly great. The less said about it the better to be honest but it was knocked off the bill so I can’t really complain.
Overall it’s 5* for the food and 4* for the service. It was quite patchy at times. Nothing terrible, but I would have been disappointed had I been paying full menu prices.
I’ll definitely be back for the early bird menu, and maybe even for the full menu if I’ve got something extravagant to celebrate.

Interesting experience at Quill.
The restaurant is gorgeous inside and is perfect for a date night or special occasion. The hostess and bar staff downstairs seemed really nice, although we just opted for wine as the cocktails are unreasonably expensive (£10 — £12) given we’re in Manchester and they didn’t sound particularly special.
Upstairs, a couple of our party arriving later meant we were left to one side for a while and struggled to get a menu, water etc. Turns out the menu is basically like 5 words though, it’s blissfully short although in very fancy terms.
We were on the £20.16 deal for 2 courses and a glass of prosecco. After ordering we were surprised by the delightfully presented amuse bouche which was a box of «eggs» containing some of the best pâté [actually it wasn’t pâté but I’ve forgotten what it was exactly so will need to edit when the others review. you get the idea. UPDATE: It’s chicken liver parfait. I actually kind of remembered this myself when I saw Jess D’s face at the Kitchens] I’ve ever had accompanied by extremely good bread. Equally outstanding was the marmite butter — a perfect zing which might have changed my life.
Starter wise, I thought the pigeon was also gorgeously presented although not memorable taste wise. However the sumptuous parmesan risotto was beautifully shot through with some balsamic caviar — perfect note of sour to offset the rich flavour of the cheese. Great dish.
The only negative thing I would say about Quill is that the upstairs servers are weird. They seemed like they were trying to act posh but came across a bit fake and uncomfortable (*I am actually pretty posh, although I normally deny this, and I’m fairly sure I don’t talk like that). If they relaxed and paid more attention to actually being around when you needed service, the bill etc then they really would be the top notch restaurant the food is already pushing for.

Went for the opening last night, lovely staff, amazing branding and décor, sample menu and cocktails were all delicious.
This place has a great atmosphere and a fantastic floor to ceiling window on the first floor looking out on to king street… perfect for a relaxing meal/​drink and people watching.