LIVING Ventures, the restaurant and bar group behind concepts such as Australasia, The Alchemists, The Oast House, Artisan, Manchester House and Blackhouse, are to bring their 'high-end Italian' concept, Gusto, to Manchester city centre.
"It's wrong for us not to have done it earlier."
The new Gusto shall occupy the current 3,5000sq ft Olive restaurant site on Lloyd Street and knock through into the Grade II listed Elliot House (1878) - the former city registrar's office and more recently the temporary City Library building at 151 Deansgate - to create a mighty 8,500 sq ft restaurant with a Deansgate frontage.
The project shall cost somewhere in the region of £2m.
There are already a number of Gusto restaurants (menus here) spattered around the peripheries of Manchester in Alderley Edge, Cheadle Hulme, Didsbury and Knutsford as well as in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Newcastle, Cookridge and Heswall.
The Gusto menu features classic and contemporary Italian dishes, with pizzas, deli boards, pasta, risotto, seafood and meats buoyed by a hefty selection of wine.
Olive Restaurant, Lloyd Street
Tim Bacon, CEO and co-founder of Living Ventures, told M&C Report: "It will be a completely different animal (to the existing Olive restaurant).
"It will be good to take a proper Gusto into Manchester because it's our hometown and it's the only one of our brands that we haven't got in Manchester.
"It's wrong for us not to have done it earlier."
It'll be two months before work starts on the site, with an opening expected around early August 2014.
Looks set to be a busy year for Living Ventures, who are also to occupy the Label bar site at 78 Deansgate, bringing New World Pub Company brand, The Botanist (Alderley Edge) into the city centre too.
Following their colonisation of Spinningfields, looks like Tim Bacon has his sites set on the city's aorta, Deansgate.
Find out more about Gusto here.
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Label set to become a Botanist
Elliot House Interior
