SWEARY celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay may have been forced to pull out of the upcoming Socceraid charity football match at Old Trafford on Sunday following ankle surgery, but the Hell’s Kitchen star could yet be on his way to Manchester.
Ramsay beware, celebrity is no surety of success in Manchester, just ask Raymond Blanc, Gary Rhodes and Nico Ladenis...
Following an upturn in profits the Gordon Ramsay Group (GRG) – which boasts 29 restaurants and six Michelin stars – is said to be considering sites in Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham as it seeks to cash-in on ‘enormous opportunities for expansion both in the UK and around the world’.
Though GRG chief executive Stuart Gillies declined to reveal which of Ramsay’s restaurant brands would be making the move north, he did say he expected GRG’s first regional restaurant to be open within eighteen months.
“We are looking at properties in Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds,” he told The Guardian. “There’s a great dining scene there and we are just considering what the options are.”
The regional site would be Ramsay’s first restaurant outside of London since launching Amaryllis in his hometown of Glasgow in 2001, which closed in 2004 despite scooping a Michelin star.
Ramsay's Maze Grill in Chelsea
The timing is certainly right. Recent research by industry consultants CGA Peach showed that over the last decade Manchester city centre exhibited the UK’s biggest jump (57%) in food-led businesses, whilst a study published in March last year showed Manchester to be closing the gap on London for the title of the UK’s most restaurant dense region.
And Ramsay would be in good company. In the last two months alone London-based groups D&D and Drake & Morgan, as well as Soho seafood institution Randall & Aubin, have announced plans to open venues in Manchester, joining the likes of Hawksmoor, Iberica, Be At One, Wahaca and Busaba, who have all launched sites in the city centre over the past fifteen months.
Still, Ramsay beware, celebrity is no surety of success in Manchester, just ask Raymond Blanc, Gary Rhodes and Nico Ladenis, who all tried and flopped in the city. Or Marco Pierre White, who, following his launch speech at the opening of the Marco Pierre White Restaurant in The Lowry, famously strode not into the kitchen to begin his shift, but the khazi.
But where will Ramsay open? Well, we know of a small place over by Piccadilly looking for 'world class operators'.
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