FRENCH General Pierre Francois Joseph Bosquet watched the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War and famously remarked: ``C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre'' - it's magnificent, but it isn't war. One's almost tempted to paraphrase his pronouncement when attempting to describe the cooking at Greater Manchester's only Michelin-starred restaurant, Juniper. It's brilliant - but is it really food? Food, that is, in the sense of the stuff that sustains and fills you up.

Chef-patron Paul Kitching sets out to amuse, tickle your sense of irony along with your taste buds; tantalise, surprise, even amaze, by indulging his whims for experimenting with tastes and textures. Comfort food isn't on the menu. The flow of dishes, are often delivered to the table with Katie O'Brien, Kitching's partner, wearing a wry smile. Little wonder, perhaps, when the miniature courses might include - wait for this - cough medicine sorbet in a plastic medicine cup, a shred of dried chewy carrot on the crushed white powder of vitamin C or a few dots of baked bean puree which you are invited to lick off the end of your finger. It's dinner, Jim, but not as we know it. What IS going on here?

Whatever it is, Kitching, technician extraordinaire, draws the crowds. You can wait as long as six weeks to get a weekend table and the regular gourmet events could sell out twice over. Hence the introduction of Juniper's ``Tables for Tuesdays'' - fixed five-course menus priced at é30 a head, originally intended to run until the end of June, now likely to be continued beyond then.

Blend

The dining room is an attractive blend of old and new - the beamed wooden ceiling and giant reproduction of Uccello's 15th century painting of the Battle of San Romano contrasting with contemporary appointments and pleasing eau-de-nil decor. It looks top notch and the quality of the service measures up to the look.

The Tuesday night five courses proper started with white chicken boudin, dried herbs, coconut, apricot cream, chocolate and leeks, a not untypical Kitching combination of bizarre raw materials dancing to his creative tune. The chicken, it turned out, wasn't a boudin at all, but came as a mound of slow-cooked, sensationally moist slivers, set upon an apricot puree, topped by a slice of spicy sausage, caramelised leeks and dried apricot and surrounded by a band of chocolate sauce. The execution was meticulous and the diverse flavours interlocked like an intricate, ultimately revealing jigsaw.

Next came a chilled vegetable consommé - the home-dried veg were sweet and concentrated like bits from a Knorr soup packet - topped by a foamed horseradish cream and served in one of those disposable plastic cups usually found beside office water fountains. ``It's a joke,'' Katie explained, sort of.

The main course square of salmon came almost raw, accompanied by caviar on a tiny scone, mushroom, artichoke and blobs of melon glaze and beetroot. The dried parsley had an intense flavour reminiscent of Chinese ``seaweed''. When it was all mopped with lovely honey bun-like homemade bread, all the colours merged into a psychedelic blur on the plate. A chef who claims not to bother with making time-consuming, complicated stocks, Kitching must spend an inordinate number of hours perfecting the repertoire of purees, foams and dried and powdered components that marks out the cooking - if that's the right word - at Juniper as unique.

The cheese platter bore no fewer than 16 small slices of deliciously aromatic, ripe French country cheeses accompanied by a tea caddy filled with a variety of crackers and Oliver biscuits. And our own cheeseboards will be partnered by fig rolls hereinafter. Dessert was another exercise in plastic-cupped irony - classical English trifle complete with banana, peach, strawberry, rich custard and the inevitable foam, flecked this time with hundreds and thousands - and the black plastic spoon came wrapped in Cellophane. Coffee en cafétiére was accompanied by a bowl of homemade chocolate truffles and tiny wedges of lemon tart.

The Juniper wine list is a comprehensive assemblage of treats from the old and new worlds, featuring eight champagnes and an impressive selection of white burgundies and prestige clarets. Stiff mark-ups, however, make the list much less of a bargain than the set menu and there is very little priced below é20. Our Louis Latour chardonnay from the Ardeche, for instance, weighed in at a rather top-heavy é21.

So where does it all go from here? Bizarre cuisine appears to be the flavour of the moment and its most lauded exponent, Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck in Bray, now has three Michelin stars. Kitching is pitching for two. Watch this space.

COOKING: Uniquely unclassifiable.

STYLE: Some of the diners appear to take it more seriously than the chef.

PLUS: Tuesday night provides stellar talent at a bargain price.

MINUS: You have to get the jokes.

VALUE: Our final bill reached é84 including the wine and mineral water.