Pho Cue heads for the edge of the Peak District with a modern Vietnamese menu made for the grills.
You don’t have to work too hard to sell Pho Cue to anyone who eats out in Manchester regularly. Hidden in plain sight in Chinatown, it’s the kind of place chefs recommend, food writers praise, and regulars quietly keep going back to.
Jay Rayner called it “everything it should be” when he visited in 2021, which is about right. It’s intimate, informal, very good value and usually busy enough to make you feel smug if you’ve managed to get a table without waiting.
The pho is obviously a very good choice. So are the bánh mì. So is most of the menu, to be honest. But for the next Open Fire Dining Club, Pho Cue are stepping out of Chinatown and heading to Torr Vale Mill for something a little different.
They’ll be joining Tartuffe on 22 and 23 August for a menu that looks at Vietnamese cooking through a few different routes: the French influence that still runs through parts of the cuisine, the traditional use of fire found across Vietnam, and Cue’s more modern approach to Vietnamese food.
There’s a continuation from the Porta dinner here too. That menu touched on the French influence in Basque cooking; this one takes the same idea in a different direction, from bánh mì and pâté to grilled meats, broths, herbs, sharp dressings and coffee. Not fusion for the sake of it, more a chance for Pho Cue and Tartuffe to find the bits of each other’s cooking that naturally overlap.
Gary from Tartuffe says the team learnt a lot from the Porta collaboration, mainly that properly leaning into another cuisine brings far more to the table than borrowing a few flavours and hoping for the best. Porta was a favourite with the Tartuffe team. Pho Cue is too. A staple in any good Manchester chef’s back-pocket Chinatown list, and very much part of the fabric of the city.
Things start with a Carlingford oyster dressed with mamuang nam pla wan — fermented mango, mint and smoked soy — before cá tái chanh, a Vietnamese-style cured fish dish using chalk stream trout. Think somewhere between ceviche and tartare, with pear, plum, Korean mustard and fermented onion syrup in the dressing. It also brings in sea grapes, or rong nho, a coastal Vietnamese ingredient that looks like tiny green caviar and brings its own natural salinity. Paired with sustainable UK fish, it’s exactly the sort of dish that shows where this collaboration gets interesting.
There’s lobster congee too, with rice cooked in lobster stock, then brought together with aged beef fat, lobster and XO. It lands somewhere in that modern pan-Asian space Cue works so well, rich and properly comforting, with a small tasting-menu take on lobster and beef pho served alongside. It would be odd to invite Pho Cue and not let pho appear somewhere.
The Big Green Eggs come into play for bò lúc lắc, or shakin’ beef, a Vietnamese street food classic given a more open-fire treatment here. Joints of Cheshire ribeye will be smoked, grilled, then basted and basted again until caramelised, before being served with oyster emulsion, black pepper and calamansi dressing.
For the table, there’ll be bánh tráng mè — sesame crackers with nước chấm, whipped pâté, scallion and ginger oil, and sriracha — followed by a sharing seafood course of sa tế Cornish squid, pla neung manao grilled sea bream and Morecambe Bay cockles with muối ớt xanh, kaffir lime leaf and green pepper sauce.
The main event is gà kho gừng, Tartuffe’s take on a Vietnamese classic. Whole Cumbrian chickens will be hung over the coals, glazed with caramelised ginger, onion and beer, then served with garlic scape, wok fried rice and morning glory.
To finish, Cue’s excellent Vietnamese coffee becomes Hanoi coffee with dulce de leche, chocolate namalake and espresso jelly.
Campari are on drinks for this one, with a Campari Spritz on arrival, classic Negronis available from the bar, and a French Negroni served with dessert.
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Open Fire Dining Club: Pho Cue x Tartuffe
– Welcome glass of Campari Spritz
– 8 course dinner
– Campari French Negroni to finish
Dates: Saturday 22 + Sunday 23 August 2026
Time: Doors + drinks: 4pm / Food: 5pm / Finish around: 9:30pm
Where: Torr Vale Mill, Torrvale Rd, High Peak, SK22 3HS
Cost: £110