I found one of Manchester’s finest Sunday roasts in this beloved neighbourhood spot

Sunday roasts are hard to get right, and even some of the best restaurants and pubs in the land still manage to do it averagely. The best barometer is not the Yorkshire puddings. Everyone seems to be able to deliver hat-sized Yokshires these days.

The same goes for beef pinkness. Anyone can undercook beef too, and you can always heat it through again for people who prefer it a bit less abattoirial. Without a time machine, it’s a lot trickier to make overcooked beef pink again.

No, it’s all about the roast potatoes. If they’ve got them right, you can be fairly sure that they’ve got everything else right too.

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The slightly exotic fenugreek-coated roasts at Maray are a straight 10/10. The roasts at Ducie Street Warehouse and 10 Tib Lane, both often celebrated for their Sunday lunches, much less so, though that was just on the occasions I visited. Bad roasts live long in the memory, sadly.

Everything else was very decent indeed at both those places, but sending a pale roast potato out of the kitchen should come with at least the threat of a custodial sentence to deter repeat offenders. I’d rather wait as long as it takes than be served up a roast that doesn’t have circa 3mm of browned, crispy potato on the outside and starchy fluff in the middle.

The roasts last weekend at Folk, on Burton Road in Didsbury, were perfection. It was a very good sign. This neighbourhood bar had a refurb a couple of years ago, and now it’s effortlessly stylish, the kind of place that has an