TNQ did everything right. The Northern Quarter Restaurant – a 30-odd cover bistro on the corner of High Street and Copperas Street – survived 22 years in the city. Like a prize fighter it ducked and weaved every uncertainty, every ebb and flow of the fickle world of hospitality. “They changed the menu when they had to, tweaked the offering,” one wine buyer told me at a recent hospitality conference, both of us staring forlornly at the stalls flogging payment systems and Ricky Gervais’ vodka. But last month TNQ’s luck ran out, and one of the Northern Quarter’s oldest restaurants closed indefinitely, citing rising bills.
Manchester’s restaurateurs see the closure as a bellwether, a sign of where the city’s hospitality industry is headed. “Places in the Northern Quarter come and go,” says Rich Carver, who has been running the pizza shop Honest Crust for the last 13 years. “But when it’s a place that well established… There hasn’t been a dip in quality; it's really just about the external factors.” Anyone who has read anything about the hospitality industry in the last few years knows what these external factors are: rising bills, some of the highest VAT rates in Europe, distant wars and a looming oil crisis.
But behind the global pressures lies a local story. A story of a food scene that, as the city developed, went from relatively modest, to proudly independent, to nationally significant. Which brings us to now: a scene governed by online influencers; one that's steadily losing its character through chasing trends, and where a new restaurant can’t open without dozens of financial backers and a queue out the door on opening night.
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