10 Tib Lane, Manchester: ‘There’s a lot to be stimulated by’ – restaurant review

Subtly spectacular: dark varnished boards, distressed walls at 10 Tib Lane. Photograph: Shaw & Shaw/The Observer

10 Tib Lane, Manchester M2 4JB (0161 833 1034). Small and large
plates £8-£20, desserts £7, wines from £24

All restaurant locations have history. The tall, narrow building at 10 Tib Lane, just back from Manchester’s Princess Street, is no exception. Tonight, chef Robert Owen Brown is the keeper of the memories. “I lugged flagstones up there,” he says, pointing at the stairs to the floor above. He waves a hand airily towards the far end of this dimly lit first-floor dining room. “That was a mirrored door made of smoked glass with a big brass cock for a handle.” Back then the place was called Lounge 10, which sounds like the death throes of a terrible movie franchise that peaked at Lounge 3. Owen Brown was the opening chef and clearly, before launch, assistant builder. The Roman orgy murals were decidedly not safe for work, and at weekends the management installed a clairvoyant in the bogs. “We did a truffle pizza,” says Owen Brown. “And a smoked fillet of beef with quail eggs. Rather good all of that, actually.”