I am normally put off by the phrase ‘bottomless brunch’ but Gordon Ramsay’s Lucky Cat is different

So when they announced a new bottomless brunch menu, I jumped at the chance. 

The pan-Asian restaurant is the second of its kind, with the first located in Mayfair, London. In Manchester, Lucky Cat is located on the ground floors of the former Midland Bank at 100 King Street, which is also home to the Gotham boutique hotel on the top floors. 

The £75 per person brunch menu includes light snacks, starters, a rice bowl main course and a dessert platter that can also be added for an extra £10 per person. The experience includes bottomless prosecco, which can also be upgraded to champagne for an extra £20 per person. The brunch menu is available every Saturday 12-4pm.

Before you’ve even taken your first sip of prosecco, it’s the architecture of the grand former bank that captures your attention. Built in the mid 1930s, the classic Art Deco building is an impressive one. It’s easy to imagine the building in its former life as a bank, with its vast open spaces, high ceilings, marble floors, stone pillars and dark wooden panelling. The simple interior design choices – deep reds and gold detailing – compliment and respect the historic building.

When we visited at around 12.30, there were only a handful of other diners there and we were seated in a cosy corner of the banquette seating, which had freshly plumped pillows waiting for us. The bottomless brunch is also soundtracked by a DJ, who was playing a smooth selection of soft house music that accompanied the meal without being too distracting.

 Our attentive servers gave us a few moments to settle in and brought us our first prosecco, and a bowl of salted edamame beans to snack on. Continuing with the fresh and healthy theme, the second snack was a Laos roll of crunchy veg with a punchy chilli jam dipping sauce that we also used for our beans. 

We went for one each of the starter choices – tempura vegetables and a typhoon tofu salad. With the tempura you get a selection of different veg, including aubergine, baby sweetcorn, sweet potato and tenderstem broccoli, which are all evenly coated in a light and crispy batter. Dipped in a soy sauce and spring onion, each delicate piece just melts in the mouth and I could have honestly just eaten a whole plate of them and left satisfied. As for the salad, the squares of tofu were well seasoned, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, served with leaves of little gem lettuce and small chunks of avocado in a tangy dressing.

The snacks and starters set us up well for the next course. The rice bowls may have looked small, but they were deep and filled to the brim. I opted for the mushroom version that had a sliced oyster mushroom, pickled enoki mushrooms, finely sliced nori and runny egg in the centre that had a rich orange yolk I enjoyed popping and stirring into the fried rice. My partner had the crispy beef rice bowl that had a subtle warmth of chilli and an umami hit from the xo. The beef had the ideal bite to it, without a hint of the grease and chewiness you’d get from your average local takeaway.  

Dessert is an optional extra and I would recommend you don’t skip on this one – the platter is definitely worth the additional £10. You get a generous helping of different berries on a bed of ice, which acts as a refreshing palette cleanser in between bites of the different chocolatey treats. There were little chocolate ice creams on sticks, as well as bowls of chocolate sorbet that came with toffee and a hint of miso. We also had a couple of sticky mochi balls that were filled with mango and raspberry ice creams. 

I am normally put off by the phrase ‘bottomless brunch’ – mainly because of the hangovers that usually follow, but this was not the case at Lucky Cat. It offers a much more refined experience and although our glasses were rarely empty, the prosecco paired well with the fresh, filling and exciting menu. At £75 per person, or £85 if you include dessert, it is one of the more expensive brunch offerings in Manchester, but it makes for an excellent afternoon of sophisticated cooking in the grand setting of one of Manchester’s most recognisable buildings.