One In Vermilion

Much of the weekend was spent at Vermilion Cinnabar in East Manchester. I say 'much of' when actually I mean 'three or four hours' but, when you're drinking £8.50 cocktails, it can feel like a lot longer than that.

Vermilion have one of those annoying websites with a plethora of menu options, music, video and animated text whenever you click through something and so, for the many people this will instantly turn off, let's just say that it could summarise itself easily as 'one of those places you can head to when you want to feel a bit chic and with the 'in crowd'. Case in point: to find the food menu you have to click the 'taste' button, which is only completely logical if you're a hipster who operates purely by labelling things with the sense they're related to.

The location is by no means great - it's out of town and has nothing else within walking distance... unless you fancy a trip to the cash and carry - but a taxi from the Deansgate area cost under £10 each way, which for a car full of people is about equal to your standard Saturday night entrance fee - something which the Vermilion bar doesn't have.

We didn't eat but the restaurant seemed lively and I'd be happy to make a return visit to check it out separately.

The upstairs bar area has a couple of regular tables dotted around the place and then several bed-like 'pods', which fit perhaps ten people at a push and are presumably favoured by those who don't like these things we all call 'chairs'. Harumphing aside, they looked quite comfortable and are probably a pretty good idea for birthday parties and larger social gatherings. Cocktails are as expensive as everywhere else and the 'standard' beer is Singha, which at £3.50 a bottle is hardly cheap but hey, it's possible to pay more without looking too far. The constantly-colour-changing 'globe' lighting was a particularly nice touch to the decor and made people look up at the ceiling on a regular basis, normally with this sort of expression on their face...

The service was good and the addition of table service when there was a wait on for drinks to be made was really welcome. Points lost slightly for only offering Vodka Martinis in the 'stirred' variety. What would Bond say. Not that it put me off drinking twelve.