Alex Turner meets chef Gary Manning who owns three top-class restaurants in Liverpool

SITTING in the private dining room of 60 Hope Street, restaurateur Gary Manning is the picture of calm.

Relaxed, 60 Hope Street’s co-owner chats easily. His demeanour is helped by the fact that lunch service is two hours away, but there is still plenty he could worry about.

Out of the window he can see his second restaurant, The Quarter, and the opening night of his third, pan-Asian themed HoSt, is fast approaching.

The newspapers are – again – full of doom and gloom about falling confidence and the marked downturn in spending ahead of Christmas, the busiest few weeks of the year for the hospitality trade.

And less than a month earlier, Liverpool One’s food balcony opened, further increasing the competition.

But none of that seems to concern him. Confidence, on Hope Street if not in the rest of the city, is still on the up.

“There is a credit crunch, but Liverpool has changed since the last recession and so much in the last five years,” he said.

“The demographic of the city has changed so much, lots of things have had a positive effect. We seem to be holding our own and the city seems to be on the up.”

Mr Manning has a simple, uncomplicated approach to his restaurants. “I have opened places I want to go and eat in myself,” he said.

“Some of the most successful restaurants at the moment, in New York and elsewhere, are pan-Asian.

“Thai is New York’s version of our Indian. It’s very healthy and it addresses many of the food issues we have about balanced diets, mixing proteins and carbohydrates.

“We’ll still use local ingredients, putting our twist on things.”

And although Manning says the name HoSt draws on the New York vibe, like Soho (South Of Houston Street), the new restaurant also draws heavily on its location in Liverpool.

“It looks fantastic. You can see the cathedrals, the Liver birds, when the sun is shining it’s fantastic.

“We are seeing a renaissance at the moment on Hope Street. There’s a sense of community up here. When the weather is great you know we are the capital of culture. It feels like the cultural part of the city, it’s in the creative part of the city,” he said.

As ever with the city, a key part of the cultural offer is football, and the restaurants on Hope Street are not immune from the influence of the sport.