CityLife

Living Room

The Living Room
City centre
September 2010

Overall: 4/5

The free drinks are flowing, perfume and heels are in abundance, and singing at the piano is not some Elton John-lookalike but a chiselled young man with boy band looks – it’s Living Room’s 10th anniversary bash, and it’s getting underway in a suitably suave fashion.

Pouts and jewels preceed frocked ladies, while suited gents sport flat caps and winning smiles. OK, so it’s not your ordinary night out at Living Room, but you get the picture.

If you were to compile a list of the city’s places where you can go to see and be seen, then Living Room is one that should be crowning this collective. It’s not shadowed in exclusivity as much as some, being smack bang in the middle of the Deansgate strip, but a stringent door policy means the socialites and celebs are favoured over your average under-dressed bar-hopper.

But within the bar industry high standards breed high standards of clientele, and every aspect of this venue’s operation is thought through down to the very last napkin. The long raised bar that sits below the Living Room’s central atrium is designed with both function and style in mind, enhancing the theatre of the bartenders’ regular cocktail making.

The top shelf is a who’s who in speciality spirits; Grey Goose and Belvedere vodka accompany Patron tequila and Bloom gin. And a newly refurbished interior gives more reason to visit one of the city’s premier bar and restaurants.

80 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 2ER (0161 832 0083).

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