By Jack Dulhanty
“People always want to take down the top dog,” Simon Martin tells me, just minutes after I’ve sat down with him in his restaurant, Mana. We’re at a table that will soon be occupied by diners paying £185 per head for a Nordic-inspired tasting menu. Martin’s staff bustle around, preparing for lunch.
Before his guests arrive, the 31-year-old chef who brought a Michelin star to Manchester wants to clear up some things I’ve been hearing about the culture at Mana. “There's people that have left here on bad terms or been fired for stealing wine, or not turning up for work,” he says.
Days later, Martin will tell my editor in an email that he didn’t regard our meeting as an interview. He will say that having two journalists sitting in his restaurant taking notes for almost two hours represented an informal chat, and that he does not wish for anything to be published “which so much as suggests you had spoken to me”.
He will also say that the 16 former members of his staff I interviewed for this story are unreliable sources — disgruntled ex-employees who are colluding to bring him down, calling their motives “childish, delusional, and quite frankly, pathetic”.
Not long after, I will hear that Martin has put a call in to the boss of one of my sources. It works. The source is worried about speaking to me again, fearing they will lose their job.
When Simon Martin arrived in Manchester four years ago, it was like a member of an alien race had run out of fuel as they were flying over Ancoats. He came from Noma, the three Michelin star restaurant in Copenhagen, widely considered to be the best in the world. And he promised to introduce Manchester to a new form of cooking: locally-sourced, sustainable, minimal to the eye but maximal on the tongue.
“It’s brilliant, it’s absolutely brilliant,” says an industry insider about Mana, which won its first Michelin star within a year of opening on Blossom Street, just behind Cutting Room Square. “The food is immensely technical — the layers of research, technique, the complexity. The almost intellectual thought that goes into those dishes is frankly pretty staggering.”
The critics have tended to agree. “Mana is the sound of Manchester turning a corner,” wrote Grace Dent in the Guardian. “Holy cow, can he cook,” said Marina O'Loughlin in the Sunday Times. “This isn’t a good restaurant by Manchester standards,” she concluded, “this is a good restaurant by world standards.”
On entering Mana, the first thing you notice is the set up: the food is cooked in the same room it’s eaten in. This translates to a dining experience that transforms the restaurant into a sort of theatre: yes, you’re there to enjoy Langoustine tail and cured egg yolk on sprigs of spruce. But you’re just as much there to watch the preparation of the next eccentric dish on the 16-course tasting menu.
If the restaurant is a show, Martin is its undisputed star. He has fiery hair, broad shoulders and the air of a capricious prince surrounded by dutiful courtiers. "His team appear to be devoted to him,” wrote O'Loughlin in her review, “there's a kind of mesmerised acolyte vibe going on in the kitchen.”
Martin also had very specific ambitions about how staff would be treated when he opened Mana. He set out to create world-class food without the toxic work culture that so often goes into producing it. During the launch period in 2018, Mana sent out a press release which was structured like an interview with Martin, written as if he were answering questions from a journalist.
“It’s now well-known that drug and alcohol addictions are widespread within the catering industry, and that’s down to the environments and conditions people are working in,” he said, acknowledging the industry’s “watershed moment in terms of working conditions”.
The macho bullying culture espoused by some celebrity chefs had fallen dramatically out of fashion in a world that took mental health seriously. “Nobody should have to go into the environments that I worked in,” Martin said in his press release. “The industry hasn’t been behaving professionally, and the new kids coming through now, they’re aware of that. They won’t put up with working in shitty kitchens — and it’s our duty to make sure they never have to.”
The day after Mana won its Michelin star in late 2019, reporters lined its glass-walled corner of Ancoats. Camera equipment swamped the dining room floor; the restaurant’s booking system crashed; Tom Kerridge sent flowers.
A few months later, I wrote about Mana for my food blog. I chatted to chefs as they roasted hazelnuts and pried open fresh deliveries. Mine was just the latest in a long line of gushing pieces about the restaurant. Describing the staff, I wrote: “What draws them here is a passion for the craft, the creativity and the ingredients.”
Then, in September last year, Martin was shortlisted for Chef of the Year at the Manchester Food & Drink Festival Awards, and Mana was up for Best Restaurant. But when the name of the restaurant was called out, boos rang out in the room. When I saw someone mention it on social media, I started reaching out to ex-staff members. Then, ex-staff members started reaching out to me.
Why would people boo Manchester’s most successful restaurant? “It's more to do with Simon,” said one former chef. Martin’s reputation among journalists and diners was not shared by the tight-knit networks of Manchester hospitality workers, I was told. Many staff had left, reporting that they were badly treated. (A spokesperson for Mana said these characterisations of Martin are “baseless allegations” and disputed our account of the awards, saying “we do clearly remember a round of applause from the floor on the night.”)
The ex-staff put me in touch with former colleagues. “The epitome of a narcissist,” is how one source described their former boss, while one former chef remembers thinking: "I'm working my arse off for the biggest cunt I've ever met in my life".
To the outside world, Mana had waltzed its way to extraordinary acclaim and success. Manchester had waited 42 years since its last Michelin star, and Martin had achieved it in less than 12 months. But the former staff members I’ve spoken to in the past five months, plus the detailed account given to us by Martin himself when we sat down with him, paint a picture of a chaotic and abusive restaurant — one that appears to work in exactly the way its founder said it wouldn’t.
This story is free to read - you just need to join our mailing list. And why wouldn't you? By becoming a Mill subscriber, you'll get our scoops, features, and insights into Manchester, in your inbox, the second we hit publish. No card details required.
Already have an account? Sign In
