LIMBO the bull is limbering up nicely. The five-year-old Limousin, his proud manhood very much in evidence, is getting frisky against the rain-lashed backdrop of Mount Famine.

His cow harem scatters. I edge a little closer to the Land Rover and ponder on the food chain that leads from this sodden Kinder moorland to the Beetham Tower under 20 miles away in Manchester (and visible on a clearer day than this).

There's no time to ruminate, though (no cudding!). We are swiftly back on our off-track livestock safari in them thar hills and there are sheep to be seen in the top field of 1,500-acre National Trust-owned Ashes Farm.

I discover the merits of the Mule over the Swaledale and Texel breeds from farmer Mike Salisbury and butcher John Mettrick and am grateful for the merits of Goretex, too. I'm here because the much-lauded Mettrick has become sole supplier of meat to David Gale's Podium restaurant inside the Beetham Tower's Hilton hotel.

He's the fifth generation of his family running a small private abbatoir in Glossop, supplying their two shops. The Hadfield branch featured in BBC's dark comedy The League Of Gentleman with butcher Hilary Briss dishing out apocalyptic 'special stuff' that turned addicted punters into drooling zombies.

Mettrick's website is cool enough to include it among their many telly/press accolades. But Glossop is the epicentre of the mini-empire, with a £2m turnover and employing 60 staff...

Abbatoir

Nine of these - three slaughterers and six butchers - work at the abbatoir tucked away off a quiet suburban street (although its tranquillity was once punctured Pamplona-style by an escaped bullock).

In my quest to trace meat from source to table I had steeled myself to watch the slaughtering process. The electric stunning, the slitting of the jugular, the blood gushing down the drain. My squeamish colleagues told me: "You'll return a vegan."

Monday and Wednesday is pigs, Thursday cattle, Tuesday sheep. I went on a Tuesday but was met with the silence of the lambs. It was all over before I arrived. There were fewer animals than normal and the health inspector required at any animal-killing had to leave early.

The slaughterhouse was eerily clean and silent. In the cold storage rooms the pigs hanging from hooks, a lacy filligree of caul fat encasing them, looked curiously beautiful.

I had to pinch myself - this was an abbatoir not a Damien Hirst exhibition.

Pluck up the courage

I meant to go back before writing this review but couldn't pluck up the courage.

And now I am inside the cosily lit, comfortable but anodyne, huge space that is Podium, staring at a fillet of Cheshire beef from Antrobus (the lamb looked tempting, too, how easily we forget).

Like Robert Owen Brown, whose new venture, The Angel, I featured last week, David Gale is very meat-savvy as well as being equally nomadic. From the Rossetti Hotel to Selfridges to City Café to the Hilton, he has worked impressively with the big battalions, but it has taken him a while to infiltrate his own chosen suppliers at his latest stop-off.

Mettrick's supply some meat to The Modern, but the link with Podium is much more comprehensive with Gale and Mettrick, helping each other by interacting over best use of carcases.

My three week-hung beef fillet main (£25), which came with celeriac mash and a potted beef Scotch egg (a strange conceit that crispily worked), was a rare delight, with more savour than fillet cuts usually muster, as were our two carnivore starters.

Deconstructed

My companion Angus's warm zampone (£9.95) was a deconstructed pig's trotter. Traditionally in Northern Italy the meat is extracted, minced and stuffed back into the trotter. Here, less porcinely, it came as a tight mound and instead of a lentil accompaniment, it perched on lima beans with a parsley dressing. Tasty and comforting, almost rillette-like.

More imaginative, though, was my starter's use of pig parts, for £8.50. Black pudding and Singleton's cheese (Lancashire I presumed) joined free range pork in a yielding, fleshy terrine. A not over-sweet vanilla and apple puree and pistachioed brioche added to the harmony.

Angus's main of butter poached Willow Farm chicken wallowed in a slightly underwhelming broth with slightly lumpen rosemary gnocchi, wild mushrooms and broad beans (£15.50), but was again evidence of real quality in raw materials.

Puddings are less demonstrative but a summer berry assiette of jelly, vacherin and pudding (£5.50) was cutely excuted to finish a meal that showed the Podium is definitely on the way up.

Let's just hope the corporate overlords allow David Gale full rein, especially when it comes to local sourcing.

With his successor Lee Scott at City Inn, Oliver Thomas at The Lowry and Ian Matfin at Abode all starting to produce exceptional, clear-sighted food, it is obvious that more than ever the hotels are standard-bearers for consistent quality in the city. Now the Hilton should grab the bull by the horns, too!

Podium, Hilton Hotel, Deansgate (0161 870 1600, hilton.co.uk/manchesterdeansgate). Tweet