The beautifully restored former stock exchange is now home to Tom Kerridge’s latest restaurant. The service is impeccable, but the food leaves a bit to be desired … and what’s with all the TVs?
When people say that The Bull & Bear, Tom Kerridge’s new restaurant in Manchester, is odd – or when they say things like, “I like it, but I’d be keen to know what you make of it” – the thing they’re talking about is the televisions: the large, mute, widescreen tellies fixed high on the walls of the carefully and beautifully restored former stock exchange, which is now a restaurant within a luxury, 42-room boutique hotel. Kerridge’s grand dining room – one of the most elegant in the north-west, certainly – is all dressed up in shades of calming sage, bottle green and rich camel, and the Edwardian baroque architecture is made all the more joyful by its revamped brass and marble features.
There are bowler-hatted doormen, a polished chessboard reception hall floor, Relais & Chateaux luxury boutique hotel membership, Ruud van Nistelrooy hocking up phlegm on the pitch after blasting one in past Everton during a montage of classic goals, exquisite cutlery and a bold, far-reaching wine list. Sorry, pardon, wind back: one of those things isn’t at all like the rest.
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