To do what they’re doing on this scale, and still score hit after hit, is quite the achievement
The Palace Hotel building has loomed over Manchester’s Oxford Street since the 1890s, a glum, Gothic monument to late-Victorian commerce. There’s no doubting the magnificence of the place: the former Refuge Assurance Company has soaring ceilings, ornate cupolas, acres of lugubrious, decorative tiling. But it always struck me as the hero of its own horror story, smelling for ever of ancient cabbage and gravy, and staffed by grey-skinned retainers in league with ghouls ready to pounce as you slept fitfully in your slightly mouldy bed.
Brrr. But no more: the exterior is still as powerfully gloomy as ever, but inside a transformation has taken place. As part of a multimillion pound restoration of the whole site, a new restaurant and bar have been created. When I first heard that Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford, aka DJs The Unabombers and owners of West Didsbury’s neighbourhood favourite Volta, were going into the Palace, I thought: nuh-huh. This felt wrong, all wrong. Their signature is small, friendly, slightly batty – no way would that work in this cavernous space. But I couldn’t have been more wrong: it’s a jaw-dropping, dazzling tour de force, from the glittering bar with its many on-tap ales and beers and truly fine cocktails, to the twinkling, fairylit Winter Garden. The Refuge is now less scary old crone and more dramatic, drop-dead glamourpuss. A vague echo of the Overlook Hotel from the Shining only adds to the vaguely spooky allure.
Related: Grafene, Manchester: It breathes ‘massive, tumescent budget’ with every tile
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