Beware: Cantaloupe in Stockport is so good it will reduce you to speaking in clichés

Photographs by Richard Saker

Have you been to Stockport recently? I go about three times a year to see my friend Jake to go over his two favourite conversational topics (knitwear and how much he loves his wife), and it’s crazy what they are doing. The whole place is made of those redbricks I grew up among that only seem to exist in a thin strata line running horizontally across the country from Liverpool to Mablethorpe. It has the higgledy-piggledy abrupt steepness and one-bit-built-over-another-bit-of-derangedness of Edinburgh. It also has a really slick public library that I did four hours of work in, and a chic little shop where you can buy a nice pen. A good way to spend a Saturday, I’ve found, is to bounce from one bench outside a natural wine bar with a hazy IPA on tap to another down Stockport’s slight high street, burbling happily among a small crowd, and at the end of that day try and charm your way into Cantaloupe.

The description of the cooking approach here isn’t going to make you do a back flip: it’s seasonal cook-what-we’ve-got food with a European lean and a very good wine list, but, as ever, if something is done well it doesn’t really matter how revolutionary it is, does it? The whole place is built into an old laundrette with an original tile floor so shiny and slippery that I nearly demolished myself on it three entire times, so that’s new, at least. It has all the markers of a modern neighbourhood restaurant half-fit: one of the walls isn’t painted; you can see the chefs; they have Who Gives a Crap loo paper in the bathroom; and it’s a little bit cold.

Cantaloupe opened last November, and has quickly become the “If you’re there…” restaurant recommendation among people in the know, and then just the people I know (30-something-year-old men who don’t go to the football any more because it makes them “have mental health”, so they spend all their money on luxury vinegars now instead). The chefs behind it, Joshua Reed-Cooper and Mike Thomas, cut their teeth in some of the more acclaimed blackboard-menu-and-a-bit-of-a-nod-from-Michelin places, Bright and Rochelle Canteen in east London, and the sadly departed Creameries in Manchester. Cantaloupe is the sort of place that means you can stay in Stockport for an actual anniversary or birthday dinner now, instead of having to crawl into Manchester to do real things. Between this, Yellowhammer and Where the Light Gets In, you now have at least three places in town to make eyes at each other over a candle and drink hand-harvested red wine while you do it.

To start, I’ve been talking and thinking about their Tarbert scallop since eating there two weeks ago, boring anyone who’ll listen by closing my eyes and describing it in detail, bringing photos out to show them on my phone like a proud dad: a fist-sized queen scallop, perfectly salty-grilled on the outside and creamy-fatty throughout, laced with brown lemon butter. The almost-smoky sear on the thing and the fact that it was fat-cut like a steak made it reminiscent of pork belly. I couldn’t get over it. I’m still not over it.

This was after I had said, “The bread here is good,” and also fairly soon after a horrible utterance of, “Shall we just order everything?” and so we were rearranging space on the table to make room for a succession of starters (I am glad to say Cantaloupe doesn’t feel small plates, it just feels very plates). A pigeon and pork terrine, studded with prunes, that had the enjoyably firm texture of a good sturdy deli meat. The first of the season’s girolles, freshly added to the A5 menu that night, served over a provolone and sweetcorn polenta that made me – and I’d already had a no-waste plum negroni and a bit of a glass of wine, so please hold some space for me here – say the thing about the bucket and wanting to eat a lethal amount of it. It was unbelievable polenta and, honestly, I think I preferred it sans mushrooms. Just slop some in an old ice-cream tub or something, then! It doesn’t have to be a bucket if you’re precious about your bucket! I’ll slurp it down like a smoothie!

Jake goes to the bathroom and I inspect my new nice pen. This is when I learn I have actually bought a pencil. The escalivada arrives. (I had to get them to explain what they’d done to this damn aubergine about three times, which is exactly before I whispered, “The service here is amazing,” like a Hollywood dame.) It’s the inverse of the polenta-no-mushrooms conundrum: a perfect bite when everything was right, when the aubergine was scooped up with crispy potatoes and acidic aioli. It feels like monkfish is having a moment, does it not? Just me then, OK – and the one at Cantaloupe was Jake’s favourite dish, with fresh glistening chard and a foam pastis that felt almost out of character in its chefiness against the just good food cooked right so far. (I found the fillet a little chewy, personally.)

The duck was a perfect-pink breast, and a Tuscan chopped liver the bonus bite on a single soldier of toast. It just felt clever without being smart-arse – something I’m not myself familiar with – and was the kind of dish you eat slowly to savour.

It’s a no-dessert kind of place, which I oddly admire despite being one of Britain’s most puddingy men, so I slipped out, and got home so exhausted I fell asleep face first without brushing my teeth. That I’m willing to admit that in public is a testament to what a restaurant Cantaloupe is.