Trof may be a small chain now, but it hasn’t lost that independent feel and having heard great things about breakfast at Trof in Fallowfield, it just had to be done.
Sadly, we got off to a poor start. I ordered the strawberry and banana smoothie (0 out of 10 for imagination) to be told there might be some made up from earlier ‘if you’re lucky’ or a few minutes delay while they make some fresh. To be honest, I was expecting it fresh. What arrived was slightly warm and very ordinary.
The breakfast itself wasn’t exactly ‘bursting off the plate’ as described, but it’s a value for money offer. The innovation for this veggie breakfast is some roasted veg; sounds like a good idea, but doesn’t quite work for me. The bubble and squeak is good. Uploaded by mobile phone to Stephen Newton’s diary of sorts
The promise of a free concert on a sunny Bank Holiday Sunday in a part of town we’d yet to visit (Manchester’s a tough place to keep up with) certainly worked on Katharine and me.
Yet while the event itself was well worth it – see I am Kloot, The Mekkits!, Bluebird Kid Clark – Spinningfields itself isn’t worth the effort of a walk down Deansgate. The cheeky beggars make you register with their website before they’ll let you view a list of restaurants; it’s a disappointing list of ever so familiar names most of which Manchester has in abundance.
Just how many branches of Café Rouge – we passed two others on the walk down and there are more – does any city need? And the people who brought you Café Rouge, also bring you Strada, which looks like a museum café, but is one of a great many identical Italian restaurants. With the exception of local Indian Shimla Pinks (hardly unique in Manchester) none of the restaurants listed on Spinningfields website has less than a dozen outlets.
I guess that approaching big chains is the easiest way for a developer to fill a new space, feels safe and probably works for the conservative business lunch crowd that’s likely to be the bread and butter trade.
But if Spinningfields has aspirations to develop an evening and weekend trade, and it certainly appears to, it needs to work much harder on developing a character that differentiates it from the rest of the city.
I am Kloot may not have stormed the charts, but they are something of a Manchester institution. Sad to say I don’t think they’ll ever truly break through; headlining free corporate gigs like this one at Spinningfields (and doing well in Germany apparently) we see them at their peak. I reckon they need to crank it up a bit, it’s all a bit folky.
They may look weird but The Mekkits! sound good and appear to have brought a large number of family members with them to Spinningfields. See also:Spinningfields, Manchester
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