City Centre

Manchester’s brand new aparthotel with huge penthouse ‘super suites’

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson - 19th January 2022

A new aparthotel is opening in Manchester city centre, with enormous penthouse ‘super suites’.

The new luxury development from CitySuites has opened just next door to its first, at Embankment West.

The brand new building contains 142 apartments ranging from compact studios to three-bedroom giants, right on the border of Manchester city centre and Salford.

Its facilities include an 18-metre swimming pool, spa pool, steam room and state-of-the-art 24-hour gym.

The pool at CitySuites II. Credit: Louis Cannell

Every single room has been designed to blend ‘the luxury touches of a hotel with the space, privacy and comfort of home’.

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Guests will sleep on Mattison beds and make use of bespoke bathrooms, as well as having access to their own fully-fitted kitchen (with washing machine, dishwasher, oven, Nespresso coffee machine and fridge-freezer), ultrafast broadband, and GHD hairdryers.

CitySuites II‘s crowning glory is its five high-end penthouse apartments, which have views of the nearby Manchester Cathedral and city skyline.

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CitySuites II in Manchester. Credit: Supplied

The largest of the penthouses spans 265 sq metres across the 16th and 17th floor of the building, and comes with a wrap-around balcony overlooking the city.

All of them have floor-to-ceiling windows, SieMatic kitchens, BORA ovens, Lutron electric blinds, home theatre systems and walk-in steam shower rooms.

The CitySuites II apartments can be booked for anything from a one-night stay up to a year-long visit.

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There’s a 24-hour concierge on site, laundry and dry-cleaning services, and residents-only co-working spaces.

  • Inside CitySuites II. Credit: Louis Cannell
  • Inside CitySuites II. Credit: Louis Cannell

The arrival of the new aparthotel also comes with new food offerings for the city.

Both its in-house brasserie and bar Embankment Kitchen and its coffee shop the Embankment Cafe are open for business.

Gavin Bailey, operations director of CitySuites, said: “CitySuites II is an evolvement of CitySuites as you know it in Manchester, everything we already are and more.

Read more: Greater Manchester Tory MP defects to Labour party with scathing letter to Boris Johnson

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“The perfect combination of comfort and luxury remains at the core of our design and approach, but with additional facilities, community areas and services we are going a step further in being able to really tailor and personalise experiences for each and every one of our guests.

“The Super Suites will offer a hotel experience currently unparalleled in the city.

“Manchester is the fasting growing city in the UK and the level of hospitality needs to rise alongside this.

“For guests who want beautiful accommodation that is spacious, high-quality yet functional, with all the amenities and services of a 5-star hotel at hand if required, then CitySuites II will be the place for you.”

Featured image: Supplied

City Centre

Manchester steakhouse Gaucho is serving a bottomless brunch with non-stop wine and cocktails

Georgina Pellant Georgina Pellant

Manchester has a new three-course bottomless brunch offer, and it sounds like an absolute beast of a deal – with premium cuts of steak, unlimited starters, and an hour and a half of free-flowing drinks.

Launched by Argentine steakhouse pros Gaucho, the new bottomless deal gives diners 90 minutes to indulge in drinks like citrus negronis, pornstar martinis, spritzes, lager and wine, with a choice of red, white and rose.

Spanning three courses and 90 minutes of drinks, starter dishes are unlimited whilst main highlights include Gaucho’s cuts of free-range Aberdeen Angus beef, reared on the flat grasslands of the Pampas. Think premium wet-aged sirloin with chimichurri and French fries and spiral-cute churrasco de cuadril marinated in garlic, parsley and olive oil.

Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats

On the unlimited starters menu, you’ll find a mouthwatering selection of morcilla, chorizo and picante rojo sausage with a lemon aioli, a selection of empanadas, beetroot ceviche with nasturtium and mango nectar, plus prawn tostadas on Arepa bread.

Read more: Aldi launches ‘adult’s breakfast club’ for families skipping meals so their kids can eat

Add in desserts like chocolate brownies with white chocolate ice cream and apple pancakes with Calvados caramel, Nutella and a dulce de leche mousse, and we’ll be surprised if you find yourself going home hungry.

Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats

Available on the last Saturday of the month between 11am and 4pm at Gaucho’s glitzy restaurant on Deansgate, dine inside a converted church surrounded by crystal chandeliers and deep leather booths whilst the restaurant’s in house saxophonist plays along to the resident DJ’s beats.

Read more: Greater Manchester chocolatier Slattery’s is selling a Hacienda-inspired Easter egg

Priced from £50pp, to find out more view the Gaucho bottomless brunch menu and book, visit Gaucho’s website here.

Feature image – The Manc Eats

City Centre

Guardian critic Grace Dent raves about ‘pointedly bonkers’ Manchester restaurant Musu

Georgina Pellant Georgina Pellant

The food critic Grace Dent has published a rave review of one of Manchester’s new restaurant openings, Musu, bestowing national kudos on the Bridge Street eatery.

Referred to by the Guardian reviewer as ‘very possibly the most expensive restaurant in Manchester’, in a glowing write up she compares it to ‘the Starship Enterprise, albeit one with geishas on the walls and a £110 seven-course menu’.

Already a favourite of Ilkay Gundogan’s notoriously hard-to-please wife (it’s the only eatery she’s praised since famously saying that the Manchester food and drink scene was ‘horrible’), thankfully, Musu has now found a more discerning reviewer to recommend it.

Dent opens by advising ‘all who have already taken terrible umbrage that Musu even exists’ to ‘abandon reading this review here’, before going on to say she, personally, is ‘rather cheered that there are still people north of Watford who have the faith and gumption to open places as pointedly bonkers as this.’

Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats

The 55-cover restaurant is described as being ‘as dark in places as Adrian Mole’s bedroom’, with plenty of attention paid to its ‘theatrical’ detailing.

A glass-fronted private dining room that, ‘at the touch of a button, turns frosted’, gets a special mention, as does Musu’s bold ‘Japanese murals, globe lighting and […] nakedly open kitchen’.

Read more: Ilkay Gundogan’s wife has finally found a restaurant she likes in Manchester after saying our food and drink scene is ‘horrible’

But the real praise is reserved for the cooking of chef Michael Shaw, formerly of Gordon Ramsay Inc and Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, hailed as ‘minuscule portions of exquisite pleasure that linger in your mind.’

As she reels through the seven-course tasting menu, praising each dish as she goes, things go from great to excellent.

At one point, after digging into Musu’s sashimi (described as ‘ three of the finest pieces of sashimi imaginable’) she proffers: ‘I felt like handing my badge back there and then – it’s over; I won’t ever taste better’, before moving on to another ‘outstanding’ dish.

Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats

If there is a criticism, it’s that upon finishing the seven courses she still finds herself hungry – commenting: ‘Very rarely – in fact, never – do I wish I’d chosen the longer tasting menu, though at £150 plus drinks, that would have been guaranteed to cause a reader revolt.’

This, in turn, leads to some good-natured musing on just who all these people are spending hundreds in ‘mobbed’ Musu on a Friday night, with Dent asking pointedly: ‘Where are they getting their money? None of them seemed to be the type to have Brink’s-Mat gold buried at the bottom of their garden.’

Read more: Historic Salford boozer The Crescent where Karl Marx drank set to reopen

Summarising, she writes: “If you’ve already decided to boycott Musu over the sheer cost, the din and the small portions, I must at this point stress that the food is outstanding.

“Sure, Musu isn’t for everybody, but if someone else is funding your wanton extravagance, then drag them there. It’s unforgettable for many reasons: some of them are hilarious, yes, but mostly they’re just plain good.”

Read more: The best restaurants and bars to open in Manchester in 2022

Feature image – The Manc Eats

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