Gigi

There are Italian restaurants, and then there are places designed around the full Italian night out. Gigi Gusto Griglia sits firmly in the latter camp. Taking over the former Gusto inside Deansgate’s Grade II-listed former Manchester City Library, the restaurant brings fire-led cooking, cocktails and late-night music together beneath soaring ceilings and grand proportions.

The inspiration comes partly from creator Jamie Barber’s memories of 1950s and 60s Italy, along with the restrained glamour he encountered while working with names including Roger Moore, Michael Caine and Sean Connery during an earlier career in entertainment law.

Barber, the restaurateur behind Hush Mayfair and a former investor on My Million Pound Menu, has conceived Gigi as a more ambitious evolution of Gusto rather than a straightforward rebrand.

The kitchen is headed by Sam Astley-Dean, formerly of Onda and Lina Stores, with the grill at the centre of everything. Bistecca alla Fiorentina arrives in hefty sharing cuts, joined by lamb, chicken, Cornish fish and shellfish, while starters and smaller plates stretch to oysters, tuna crudo, beef carpaccio and grilled friggitelli peppers. Fresh pasta, pizzette and dishes including brown crab linguine and monkfish wrapped in Parma ham complete a menu built around long, leisurely dinners.

Drinking is treated with equal seriousness. Bar Eleganza occupies the heart of the room, complete with a baby grand piano and what the team calls Manchester’s first House of Negroni. Drinks have been developed by Errant, the people behind Stray, spanning Negronis, Martinis and Sgroppinos alongside wine. Live pianists, selectors and DJs shift the mood as the night develops, while a separate Jackson’s Row entrance adds a more clandestine route into the bar.

WANT Studios has helped shape the concept and entertainment programme, while Russell Sage Studio — whose previous work includes The Savoy and projects for Gordon Ramsay — is behind the interiors. Rather than overwhelming a building dating back to 1878, Gigi makes a feature of its historic scale.

The result lands somewhere between Italian grill room, grand hotel bar and late-night Manchester haunt: somewhere built as much for lingering over a Negroni after dinner as it is for steak, pasta and pizzette in the first place.