The Alan, 18 Princess Street, Manchester M1 4LG (0161 236 8999). Snacks and small plates £3-£6.50, steaks and chops £16-£28, desserts £7, wines from £25 First impressions matter. First impressions can also be wrong. The first impression tonight at the Alan, a new boutique hotel on the edge of Manchester’s Chinatown, is of somewhere about as popular as herpes. The moodily lit foyer is a confection of raw brick and rough plastered walls, housing stone slab tables of the sort Aslan might be sacrificed upon if you were in need of a little light midcourse religious symbolism. There’s ceiling ducting and spindly industrial lighting and acres of polished crazy paving-style stone floor. And almost no punters. The Alan isn’t just quiet. It feels abandoned. A single employee is on duty in the main foyer this evening, eyeing the entrance. He greets us cheerfully as we push through the doors. Perhaps he’s grateful for the company. To the right is the dining area. There’s a square, open kitchen, edged by a low counter. It houses three earnest-looking cooks. You can watch them at work while you eat, but tonight nobody is doing so. They are cooking for just a couple of tables. Granted, it’s a Tuesday night, but currently there aren’t that many options in Manchester on a Tuesday night. I should know. I’m in town for a turn in Dictionary Corner on Countdown, constantly hoping to find an esoteric word from the nine available letters to make me look clever. (Esoteric would be a great eight-letter find.) It’s an opportunity to review, so I’ve scoped out the options, but perhaps because of ever-present staff shortages the available candidates, both obvious and less so, are not open on a Monday and Tuesday.