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Bistrotheque at Cultureplex, Manchester: ‘Largely forgettable’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent
This self-consciously chic bistro is a place to be seen in, if you can find it in Manchester’s vast new fun-plex
Bistrotheque, a brasserie in Bethnal Green, east London, has become something of an institution since it opened in 2004. Dependable dinner, dependably raucous crowd. Chic chaos, steak frites, Twinkles, then downstairs to the club area to watch vagabond drag cabaret act The LipSinkers belt through songs by ABC, Kate Bush and Madonna. Or at least that’s how I remember Bistrotheque in its early days, down a back lane where mini-cabs drove gingerly. Nothing wholesome ever happened there; it was, instead, a space where renegades thrived.
Now, almost 16 years later, I find myself off to an all-new Bistrotheque in Manchester, in a former railway goods warehouse behind Piccadilly station. This new Bistrotheque is a small subsection of a vast, land-of-dreams leisure complex named Cultureplex. Created by Pablo Flack and David Waddington, the very same people who conjured up both Bistrotheque and then Hoi Polloi at the Ace hotel in Shoreditch, Cultureplex is one of those dining, eating, drinking, thinking, art-house, cocktail, coffee spaces that have emerged this year, in a similar vein to Oxford Street’s extravagant yet puzzling Arcade Food Theatre. Ah, these hyper-modern spaces that defy neat definition, or even any incredibly baggy definition. The more you gaze at Cultureplex’s website, the less fettered by earthly possibility you become. Go for a double cortado at Klatch, stay for the Bob Fosse movie, hear a piano recital by Rowan Lewis, then take an animal movement class at the gym, Blok. This is what today’s modern renegades desire.
