Six By Nico: Vegan Nostalgia
The Six by Nico vegan Nostalgia menu presents an intriguing journey through familiar tastes and nostalgic experiences, creatively crafted by the team at Six by Nico. Each dish is designed to evoke memories of the past. For those who remember, last year, I visited Six By Nico and tried their “Best of the Year” menu and absolutely raved about it. For me, it was great food, and I called the whole meal that I had eaten all year. So when the option was presented to me to end 2024 doing the same again, I took it up in a heartbeat. However, at the end of the meal, I felt cheated, underwhelmed and even ordered myself a takeaway before I’d even gotten home. Especially after seeing other branches of Six by Nico serve the dishes correctly. The Six By Nico nostalgia menu may have been great for meat eaters and even vegetarians, but as a vegan, I would go as far as to say it was thoroughly disenchanting.
For this meal, we also opted for the wine pairing that comes with each dish, sharing half a glass of wine each to avoid overindulging, given the size of the plates. First up was the “Blockbuster” dish, a vegan cheese, hazelnut and quince taco, and it was quite nice. A great start to the meal, and I enjoyed the gimmick of it being served on a Blockbuster video case. Quince has never been my favourite of tastes, I’m not a huge fan of jams or jellies, but in a crunchy taco with cheese, I found it really quite agreeable. This dish was one of the six that was closest to its carnivorous and vegetarian counterparts, which I appreciate. When going for the vegan version of a tasting menu, you never want to feel like you’re missing out or being shortchanged. Sadly, that starts to become a theme throughout the meal. Next up was the dish “Toadstool”, Smoked maitake, smoked celeriac, cep gnocchi, lovage, truffle and sherry cappuccino. Or at least that’s what we were told it was. Looking at the picture, you can see what was lovingly described to us throughout the meal as ‘vegan emulsion’, it’s vegan mayo. It was used on 50% of the dishes, and it’s mayonnaise. It tasted alright, don’t get me wrong, but I’m sure it’s no Dr. Will's Vegan Mayonnaise. The dish itself was fine, a little underwhelming as normally I’m a sucker for any mushroom based dish, especially with truffle but I just felt like I didnt get half the incredients. Sadly, I didn’t record each wine that came with each dish, but they were all good. I have no complaints about the wine; if anything, it helped me get through the meal.
Following “Toadstool” was “Let’s Go Camping”. Smoked potato, red pepper romesco, nasturtium and almonds. I’ve got to be honest, I loved this. Maybe it was due to the last two dishes underwhelming me, but this was easily my dish of the night. Now it is a far cry from the meat version of the dish, which was smoked Pork sausage and aged belly paired with the red pepper romesco, nasturtium and almonds. But I can make my peace with it because at least it looked like the carnivorous version. The flavours of the smoked potato and red pepper romesco worked perfectly together, and I could’ve eaten three or four more.
“Time To Grow Up” is really where the meal starts to take a nosedive. Barbecue hispie cabbage, miso carrots, served with onion foam and carrot cromesquis. I’m unsure if you can fully see from the picture, but what we were served was cold charred cabbage, half a slice of carrot, some carrot jelly and two generous dollops of vegan mayo. Now you might think that this is only a small plate, so I should expect a lot of food. The meat version was barbecue Coley, miso carrot & lobster emulsion, served with crispy fish finger, shellfish bisque & salted kumquat. Now I understand how hard it must be to adapt this menu and be able to serve it to multiple different dietary requirements. But it just felt like this specific Six by Nico in Deansgate didn’t even try. That was the saddest part, because I have looked up other vegans getting this tasting menu, and what they received was so far from what we did. Following this, we were served “What came first, the chicken or the egg” from the A World of Imagination menu. Funnily enough, if you check out last year’s review, you would see that we were served this previously, and the difference between the two dishes was night and day. Roasted cauliflower, cauliflower couscous, cauliflower beignet, cauliflower puree… with more vegan emulsion. Now this was nowhere near the level at which we were served the dish last year, but it was a nice little callback for us, and I at least enjoyed it. By this point, we were already on Just Eat, planning what we were going to order when we got home.
Last and certainly least, the dish we were meant to receive was “Snowball Fiiiight!!” Coconut parfait, lime gel, dark chocolate ganache, vegan yoghurt snow. As you can see, we have none of that. Again, calling back to someone else ordering the dish, they did receive everything which was listed, so it wasn’t as if it wasn’t vegan. This dessert cemented it to us that we just wouldn’t be returning to Six By Nico if this was the level of food they would be serving to vegans. Especially after how much it costs. It’s a shame because the year prior, I really enjoyed the experience and would’ve recommended it to everyone, but following this meal, I wouldn’t even go myself. In the end, what we received was three cubes of watermelon, two slices of apple, a raspberry and some lime gel. At least it wasn’t more vegan emulsion.