28 February 2018

D&D LONDON is what you’d call a major player in the hospitality industry. Over a decade after it emerged from a buy-out of Conran Restaurants it runs 35 restaurants worldwide, the latest of which is 20 Stories Manchester, which opened to the public on March 1 with its provocative Last Supper-inspired Chef's Table painting on its wall.

On the eve of its spectacular launch party on the top floor of the No.1 Spinningfields tower Taste of Manchester caught up with the eponymous duo who run this empire – Des Gunewardena and David Loewi. As you’d expect from such symbiotic operators their answers to our questions intertwined, so for convenience D&D speak as one! 

Our first question for this still London-centric group… 

Why Manchester now?

We’ve been looking to at coming to Manchester for 10 years now. Mike Ingall at Spinningfields is one of the main reasons we are here. Coming out of the 2008 slump, and we came up and it was a bit windswept and there was a Cafe Rouge and a Carluccio’s.

We thought no, it wasn’t right for us. And then. Eventually we said what about this?

If you think of doing anything regionally outside London it’s got to be Manchester. Now. 

Wherever we go, Paris or NewYork, ideally we want to go into an amazing space. We’ve got it, we think. That’s why it has been worth waiting for and we’re incredibly excited by it.

People in London might not like it but our most exciting opening, with the way it looks, since New York. 

We’ve won lots of awards. German Gymnasium (in Kings Cross, London) won best bar in the world award in 2015. An incredible interior, but this is on another level. You’ve got the Manchester skyline and this roof garden in the centre  of the city. It’s awe-inspiring.

When we came in it looked like a Terminal 5 space. We worked hard to make it a world class design with genuine warmth. People make the mistake, thinking if you have such a view you don’t have to work on interior. No. It’s got be gorgeous, as if you didn’t have  a view. It’s a visual feast in its own right

Ivy and Soho House are bringing their chains to Manchester. In contrast, 20 Stories is different, an original?

It’s what we do. We shouldn’t be slagging off chains. This is not a London chain coming up; we want this to be a Manchester restaurant. OK Aiden is from Liverpool, but he is a Manchester chef, who has worked here for years. It’s Aiden’s food not our brought-in concept. It’s similar to the way we have a Parisian restaurant called Alcazar. Parisians have no idea it has British owners. What’s important is to create a great restaurant. We have no other restaurant like it. So yes it’s different from what Ivy and Soho House are doing.  Our game is to create something unique for this city and it will live or die by whether or not it’s worth going to.

How important was it to get Aiden?

At Alcazar we have a local chef and general manager. We wanted a local guy who knows his suppliers and is an integral part of the community rather than us flying someone in.

Manchester has always done casual dining well, but city has stepped up a gear recently. Do you see yourself going in direct competition with Aiden’s old place, Manchester House, and Adam Reid at The French?

When we are in London we don’t say we’re in competition with this half dozen restaurants or whatever; we say we bringing something fresh. There may be people coming to the main restaurant who will be going to Manchester House, too, but there’ll be those coming to the bar instead of Albert’s Schloss. For the grill, the music and the outside terrace.  People who would usually eat out in Wilmslow might come here; othermight choose to eat out with us rather than go to the theatre. We want to be a part of something that’s growing. We don’t to come up and take the business that’s already here. The better the restaurant scene is the more people will come to Manchester. What Spinningfields did, Mike and Tim Bacon did, was change the dining scene. They opened Australasia, Manchester House and lots of casual venues, including the Oast House, which I think is fantastic. They showed that if you create more restaurants you create a new scene.

Already there’s an expectation this restaurant might finally be the one that gets those two words that have evaded us for so long; Michelin star. Do you even think of things like that?

No, no. We have Michelin starred restaurants but we don’t go out to design restaurants to get Michelin stars. Absolutely not our game. At South Place Hotel we were going out to do a Scots theme, simple fish dishes, democratic and generous, and then we sat with our chef and he did a tasting for us and it wasn’t quite in the genre we wanted; six months later we had a Michelin star. It was not what we were after but, know what, it means a lot to chefs and we were very happy about it.

We have to say, we don’t think it’s a great thing for Aiden and The French to have this constantly ‘are we getting a star or not?’  going on. The world is not looking for ‘oh my God, when is Manchester going to get one?’. If it comes Aiden will love it, everybody will be incredibly proud.

Manchester should not feel we need one. They should say, wow, this is a great restaurant, unlike one we’ve seen before… and, oh my God, that roof terrace in the summer. Aiden is cooking his socks off, fantastic food, and if we get any accolade that’s great but ultimately we’re here to do the best we can.

How important is the drinks side of things to you? Equal billing to the food?

No, it doesn’t take equal billing to the food, but it’s very important. The last few years we’ve focused more on the bars. We have got some of the most successful bars in London and it’s not just cocktails. Someone said to us (and I think this is true) we are a restaurant company but we are the number one venue in the UK for Peroni. At Madison (St Paul’s London). Wine’s important to us and we have historically always taken our wine seriously. We encourage our sommeliers to come up with interesting wines, wine lists that our customers can relate to, fairly priced, as well as food.

The cocktail scene is much more important to us now. There is a a bar culture. Everyone has their own ideas about correct recipes and methods. We encourage our barmen to know how to mix a perfect Negroni, Old Fashioned, a perfect Dry Martini. Yes, we want our barmen to experiment, but we also want them to do the classic cocktails at the highest level.