Pasture steakhouse group picks Manchester for four venues
Bristol-born Pasture Restaurant Group will run four separate spaces inside the St Michael's development, its first restaurants anywhere in the north of England.
Pasture Restaurant Group, the fire-cooking steakhouse business chef Sam Elliott built from a single Bristol site, is bringing four venues to Manchester's St Michael's development.
The flagship is Pasture Manchester, a ground-floor restaurant built around open-fire cooking, dry-aged beef and an in-house butchery, set inside the development's 43-storey tower. Alongside it, the group will run W Lounge, the hotel bar at the on-site W Hotel; Abercromby, a historic pub being restored as part of the scheme; and Terrace, an outdoor space beside the pub serving a Mediterranean-leaning, all-day menu.
St Michael's is a joint venture between Relentless Developments, led by former footballer Gary Neville, and property group Salboy. The second phase includes a 162-room W Hotel and 217 W Residences alongside the restaurant and bar space. Other operators already signed for the scheme include Big Mamma's Circolo Popolare, Chotto Matte and Grind.
A steakhouse group bets its fifth UK site on a city where even well-known names have just closed theirs.
"Manchester is a city we're hugely excited to become part of," said Sam Elliott, Pasture's chef-owner, calling the expansion a significant step for the group.
Gary Neville said Pasture was "exactly the kind of operator we want to attract" to the development, adding that its concepts would bring quality and personality to the scheme.
Four concepts, one developer
Pasture opened its first restaurant in Bristol in 2018, followed by Cardiff in October 2020, where it also runs the small-plates concept Parallel and the cocktail bar Nightshade. Its Birmingham restaurant opened on Colmore Row in June 2024, and a first restaurant outside the UK, Pasture Barcelona, is under construction. In 2023, the group received the Sustainable Restaurant Association's top three-star Food Made Good rating.
No opening date has been announced for any of the four Manchester venues.
A steakhouse arrives as others retreat
The expansion lands in a city where the restaurant trade has not moved in only one direction. Earlier this year, James Martin's own Manchester restaurant closed after 14 years, a reminder that an opening of this size is still a bet, however well-financed.
For now, Pasture's wager is that Manchester has room for a fifth UK outpost built on the same open-fire format that built its reputation in Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham.
