The high profile Merseyside-born chef is teaming up with developer Salboy to take on Grade II listed Black Friar pub on the corner of Blackfriars Road and Trinity Way.
The new venture is the centrepiece of the Local Blackfriars development, which also includes 380 apartments, townhouses and penthouses set within a pair of modern tower blocks.
Black Friar will be spread across all three floors of the original building and will also incorporate a new single level glazed building to the side, subject to a planning application.
The main building will have a traditional pub interior with wood panelling and open fires and an intimate first floor fine dining restaurant with around 20 covers while the newly created building will house a casual dining restaurant with an open kitchen.
The £2m restaurant is being funded by Salboy and its construction partner Domis with a ‘significant’ personal investment from Byrne and his wife Sarah who will run the operation as a team.
“I am so excited by this. Simon Ismail (Salboy founder and director Simon Ismail) and Lee McCarren (a director of Domis) are just gorgeous blokes who really wanted this to happen and for it to be the very best.
”They have been great to deal with. I was introduced to them and was gobsmacked by the quality of work at Blackfriars and their passion for the area. It will bring a whole new experience to this part of the city with the ground floor providing the hustle and bustle of casual dining and the pub providing the ‘local’ for Blackfriars.
Byrne closed his Manchester restaurant MCR earlier this year, saying at the time that he was ‘mortified’, but that the two-month rolling lease had made it too ‘precarious’ to invest in the Spinningfields site.
Byrne will continue to operate the Church Green, the Cheshire pub in which he won a Michelin star when he was just 22.
He no longer holds the accolade at the Lymm pub but remains the youngest British chef to ever win a Michelin star.
