THE internet has become an elegy for failed restaurants. Long gone are the luxury fittings, the chefs, the dreams, but the websites linger on. When Taste of Manchester charted a recent raft of establishments going under we couldn’t resist checking out the digital afterlife of high profile past casualties.
Six years since Ithaca in John Dalton Street shut but with one click you can still call up the final menu and check out the Home Page with all its aspirations: “The ITHACA dining experience is an eclectic mix of South-East Asian culinary delights, put together by a team of the world's finest Pan-Asian and Japanese chefs at our amazing £4m venue in the city centre, which will be the flagship restaurant for the Ithaca Group.”
Fast forward to August 2016 and the locked-up Avalanche on Booth Street. One note outside says ‘closed for essential renovations and maintenance’, another says that bailiffs entered and secured the property on August 8.
Understandably with this time scale the website is up-to-date but instantly poignant: “The interior of Avalanche has been designed to create a relaxed atmosphere during the day, and at night Avalanche emulates the fine dining establishments of Paris and Monte Carlo. The beauty and grace of the restaurant is encapsulated in Avalanche’s grand chandelier which is 100 kilos of bespoke, hand crafted crystal and crowns those walking along the stairway.” Well, that chandelier will definitely have a sell-on price.
Avalanche opened in Booth Street in 2012 after Lime bar felt the squeeze and concentrated on its Salford Quays offshoot. On the site of the city’s first Italian restaurant Isola Bella, it offered its own take on that cuisine but faced stiff competition nearby from Rosso, Jamie’s, Croma and across the road the expensively revamped Piccolino’s.
Ironically, only two years ago Avalanche’s owners announced plans for expansion into two new South Manchester sites.