More than 30 years ago, two mates were putting the world to rights over a Nepalese curry and a couple of pints when they noticed a small vegetarian cafe on Lapwing Lane, just off Burton Road in West Didsbury. Though neither of them had run a restaurant before, something about it piqued their interest.
As luck would have it, when driving past the next day, a ‘For Sale’ sign was being put up. An offer, some paperwork and a set of keys later, Greens - one of Greater Manchester’s best loved restaurants and a veteran of the veggie scene - was born.
Those two friends were chef Simon Rimmer, who you might know from Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, and his business partner Simon Connolly. The pair have since opened a number of other restaurants, and undertaken other projects, but now are coming back to where it all started.
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Back then there wasn’t much of a vegetarian scene in Manchester beyond home cooking or specialist cafes. “When we opened Greens in 1990 it felt that it was almost a negative as a type of cuisine - what you can’t eat and what you can’t do,” Rimmer says when we meet at the new outpost on Stanley Square in Sale.
Indeed, a lot has changed in the perception of vegetarian food over the last 30 years, but Greens has remained a staple of the local food scene. "Very early doors, we were the first entirely veggie restaurant in the UK to be in the Good Food Guide and we also received an AA Rosette in 1992, which we’ve had right the way through.
“I think we’ve become synonymous with modern veggie food by default almost and we’ve been trailblazing that path. If people have ever been a bit scared of veggie food we’ve always been friendly and accessible. I think it's the fact that 32 years on we’re still relevant and I think that’s a really big achievement.”
Today, they’re still setting the agenda, opening a second branch on Stanley Square in Sale. The new Greens consists of a 60-cover restaurant, alongside its own standalone bar and outdoor terrace - a first for the brand.
“I hatched the idea for this around six or seven years ago and then little by little it started to nag at me, and then finally there was the chance to come here. The whole development in Stanley Square is fantastic and it felt like I had all my ducks in a row, so we thought we should probably take a chance on it - it just feels like the right place and time, and we’ve still got something to say.”
The design of the new restaurant has been overseen by Mark Mason Design, the same Manchester-based consultancy behind the design of El Gato Negro on King Street. Reflecting the ethos of Greens, the fitout has been created as sustainably as possible with ceilings and walls left exposed in parts, and recycled fabric for the banquette seating.
“We’re also using water from a company called Belu where all their profits go to water charities, we no longer buy bottled water so we’re buying reusable bottles, and the cooking areas are fully electric so we’re not burning fossil fuels in the same way. Even the paints used in the beautiful artwork are biodegradable.”
The artwork Simon is referring to can be found on the restaurant side of the space. Curated by Parisian street artist Nerone, the painting is, as Simon says “the focal point of the space”, with its beautiful and colourful sea of flowers in hues of light sky blue, poppy red and lemon.
“It genuinely makes me cry. Where my parents live in the Wirral, there’s a community art project where on the side of old terraced houses they had these amazing murals and a friend of ours was involved and when I was looking for somebody to paint this wall he said you have to try this guy.
“From where we’re sat it looks completely flat but the joyous thing is that when you get really close to it you can see the brush marks. It fills me with joy and it makes me really emotional, it's the thing that ties everything together.”
Those sitting near the open pass will also be able to get a front row seat on all the kitchen action. In a slight deviation from the flagship restaurant in Didsbury, menus at Greens in Sale focus on sharing. "This is more of a contemporary approach to how you would do a menu, so small plates and large plates.
"What we’ve found at Didsbury is more and more that people are sharing anyway, and I also eat more in that way. But you can still construct your meal here into starters and mains.
"The heritage dishes from greens are still here though, like the black pudding taster, the oyster mushroom pancakes and the mushroom wellington. One of the dishes that has already become very popular here is the deep-fried cauliflower with a Korean BBQ sauce, which is so good that I could just drink the BBQ sauce."
Small plates also encompass sweet potato and spinach dahl; black lime and cumin tofu; and barbecued carrot with apricot and sunflower seeds, while large plates feature some heavy hitters like the spinach, pistachio and feta filo pie. Equally as impressive and definitely worth saving some space for, desserts such as the cinnamon doughnuts with salted caramel chocolate, and the miso banana sticky toffee pudding served with a side of vanilla ice cream.
Now, with its own bar, there’s also the opportunity to say something with the drink selection, which features a number of classic cocktails, local beers and - in a first for Greens - a totally vegan wine list. “We’ve gone bigger on drinks here because we are an independent bar as well, and I can’t believe how many cocktails we’ve sold - we’re knocking out loads of Palomas and Aperol Spritz.
“The other thing that’s important is that our wine is all vegan, plus we’ve got some great beers, we’ve partnered with Shindigger and also Estrella who are an ethical brand."
For Simon, the biggest take-home is the restaurant’s continued relevance and ability to win over even the most hardened sceptics, which after 32 years in the game is quite the accomplishment. “One of the big shifts we’ve seen is the change in clientele - when we started off it was students, quite young, and it was much more female skewed in the early days, you would very rarely get middle-aged blokes in.
“Just ten days in here in Sale, I don't think anyone has really made any comment like ‘oh it's good for a veggie restaurant’. It’s almost incidental, what we are is hopefully just a very good restaurant."
So what's next, well other than a refresh of the Didsbury branch and keeping an eye on other potential neighbourhoods in embedding the Greens brand, Simon is quite content to just take it all in. “I don’t want to compromise on what we do but the general aim is somewhere around five Greens in the next few years but it’s 30 odd years since we launched the first greens so there’s no great rush.
“I think it's the fact that 32 years on we’re still relevant and I think that’s a really big achievement that we’re still full and we’ve opened a second site and that's full - we must be doing something right.”
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