A new cocktail bar is throwing open its doors on Chorlton’s Beech Road next week, with some high-end drinks and a nod to nostalgia. 97, at 97 Beech Road, is right next door to veteran hostelry and bistro The Lead Station, which has been serving the neighbourhood for nearly 30 years.
Handily, it’s also being run by the same team, with restaurateur and bar owner Nick De Sousa teaming up with newly-minted cocktail expert and Chorlton-native Ellie Craddick behind the bar as general manager.
In a pleasing twist, Ellie’s first Saturday job as a teenager was in Richardson’s, the famous Chorlton bakery right next door, before she went to work next door but one at the Lead Station, bussing plates and waiting on.
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By the time she went off travelling last year, she was the Lead Station’s bar manager and had been making moves towards a career in the more refined end of drinks-making. “It was about two or three years ago that I got into cocktail making,” she says. “For me, it was the daiquiri. It’s simple in terms of ingredients, but it’s a complex drink.”
The daiquiri on the menu at 97 plays into this. It features desiccated coconut, white rum, green chartreuse and a dash of absinthe. “It’s not too far removed from a classic daiquiri,” she adds.
For someone so young, she’s hurled herself headlong into the craft, using her sabbatical to visit cocktail spots around Europe for inspiration, while turning her hand to making her own tinctures, washing spirits, blending homemade cordials and creating atomisers to add to make her creations that little bit more experiential. She’s not messing about, in short.
“We’ve started using sous vide, we’ll be doing our own carbonation, we want to bring in centrifuges, we’ve got our own cordials, tinctures, bitters, and we’ll be changing the menu three times a year,” she adds. “Bring in new drinks and new techniques. We want to stand out.”
Those drinks she’s talking about will be pleasingly presented too. They’re listed on cards like Top Trumps, with each attribute - bitterness, sweetness etc - given a number rating. It’s both informative and you can actually pass the time over your Old Fashioned playing the game too.
The menu boasts 14 house classics, each with its own twist, from the white negroni to the whiskey sour, as well as another 11 signature drinks, like the herbal Evergreen, blending calvados, Argentinian Mate gin, Fino sherry, Jasmine Verte, with a basil and pepper tincture.
“We’re a modern cocktail bar for the neighbourhood,” says De Sousa, who also owns Tariff & Dale in the Northern Quarter, and who was responsible for the bar’s smart design. “Ellie has worked with me for years, and this is driven by her, and by her great interest in mixology.
With The Jane Eyre opening its second site on Beech Road earlier this year, following a handful of closures on the popular street, the arrival of 97 feels like another shot in the arm, not to mention another string to Manchester’s increasing number of world class cocktail bars.
“Beech Road has always been a bit shabby chic,” says Nick. “Long may it retain that avant garde, and that support for independent businesses. God forbid some big multiple operator comes in. It wouldn’t fit. We’ve got this eclectic mix, and long may it continue.”
97 opens from Wednesdays to Sundays from March 10.
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