Manchester must have had a good summer so far, because everyone in the Restaurant, Bar and Grill on John Dalton Street is looking very tanned. They come in matching pairs of men in well-ironed designer-label shirts and women accessorised with gold belts, snake skin wedges and tiny handbags. It's only midweek, but the clothes are elaborate and perfectly assembled. Manchester these days is wearing its new-found sophistication on its sleeve.
Just down the road, the Great John Street Hotel is getting into its stride. It opened a few weeks ago, receiving a baptism of fire on its second weekend when Oasis came to town. While the band stayed at Manchester's first five-star, The Lowry Hotel in Salford, the rest of the city's hotels were bursting at the seams. Great John Street had to turn people away. "We didn't dare do capacity," says David Toulson Burke, the general manager. "It was too early." As a result of this caution, perhaps, the hotel - from its mink-coloured carpets to its mushroomy walls - is still in mint condition.
Great John Street has been fitted into a building that used to be a school for the children of itinerant barge people, or "water gypsies" as one Mancunian described them to me. As a result, the rooms are generous, and the corridors a little foreboding. The bar, three adjoining rooms full of chairs and stools upholstered in silky velvets and ritzy brocades, is as much a symbol of Manchester's bid for glamour as the highly evolved dress sense of the diners at the Bar and Grill. And like the Bar and Grill, the whole building is non-smoking. In this, Manchester is well ahead of London - a forward-looking city taking a proactive stance on the inevitable.
Great John Street is central Manchester's first proper boutique hotel, with a charmingly huge appetite to please. Your butler (yes indeed) will cater to your every whim. He will run your bath and bring your champagne, collect cleaning, pop out for dental floss, book your restaurants and probably pull the curtains for you if getting out of bed feels like too much of a chore. Ours was called Paul and we had him bring our car across town, when we realised it had been stupid to leave it behind. He looked very tired, as if his services are proving popular.
The hotel will never get a million stars because it doesn't have car parking (they drive your car to the nearest NCP, but forget to tell you that the overnight parking charge is £20), or a restaurant (though it does fine breakfasts in a lovely upstairs room). But it does have splendidly large beds and a decor that is a tiny bit camp - just like a hotel should be. And it is a lovely calm and comforting place to stay.
It will never take business away from the well-oiled Lowry, which opened in 2001. The Rocco Forte establishment is a proper five-star with all that implies, as well as the added value of the biggest, sexiest corridors in the world of hotels. While all that corridor space speaks about wicked indulgence, Great John Street is more a home from home. I hardly need to tell you that the footballers love the Lowry. And as long as you can afford a staggering £8.50 for an egg-and-cress sandwich washed down with a £3.25 espresso, you can love it, too.
When I lived in Manchester nearly 20 years ago, the Hacienda was a nightclub, not an ugly new apartment block, and the only place you could get a cappucino was in a chilly subterranean space called the Italian Centre which is long gone. There was one cocktail bar, in St Anne's Square, and a small Topshop, where I once saw Gail Tilsley picking out lacey underwear. Now there's a Harvey Nichols. With a cocktail bar.
Many say that the city was saved by the Arndale Centre bomb in 1996, which led to a complete reconstruction of its centre. But really it's been saved by money which has gradually seeped back into the post-industrial city through commerce and various grants. A strong media presence (not just Granada and the BBC, but many production companies have set up major outposts here) strengthens the mix.
Whether there are quite enough people wanting to buy the thousands of chi-chi warehouse conversions and landmark new apartment blocks being built remains doubtful, though The Edge, positioned next to The Lowry for maximum credibility, is selling well at £149,950 to £999,500 for the triplex penthouse. Its show flats, decorated by fashion designer Ben de Lisi, are the height of metropolitan chic.
According to some people I spoke to, footballers buy flats in the city to use when they're in town. Not in the London sense of up from the country, but literally in town doing their shopping before driving the half hour back to the status-laden Altrincham. "They go and change their shirt and get back in the car," said one. "Or their wives will nip in and touch up their make-up."
Though the Manchester property crash is a real possibility, its fancy new bars and restaurants are having no trouble packing in the punters. To enjoy Panacea, recently opened beneath the Bar and Grill, you must first live up to its carefully crafted door standards. Only then will you be able to descend to its deluxe interior, all soft brown leather sofas and subdued yellow lighting, where groups of well-to-do thirty-somethings gather around midnight to down cocktails.
To experience the Mint Bar, in the overdone Rosetti Hotel, you have to call the guest list weeks in advance. But for those enamoured of footballers and their wives, the decision that you will fancy a watermelon martini at Mint three weeks from now will really pay off.
At Lounge 10, said to have once been a brothel, you can eat good food if you can tolerate the black walls and renderings of naked women on the walls and the frosty reception from the door girl. You can also sneak up to the top floor and see the room where celebrity footballers are rumoured to have conducted illicit liaisons, and then have your tarot cards read in the toilets. At Love Saves the Day, an excellent organic cafe and deli in the hip Northern Quarter, you can admire the outer reaches of rock and roll: it was set up by Simply Red's former drummer. Or prop up the bar on the top floor of Harvey Nics at the end of the working day, and it won't be long before you start to feel like an extra in Cutting It as the assistants drift in at the end of their shifts.
Perhaps now that the thrill of the cheap flight has worn off, and we're beginning to realise that a weekend in Bratislava bookended by the misery of Stansted airport really isn't all that, the time for the British city vacation has come. And if it hasn't, buck the easyJet trend anyway, and put the chic new Manchester at the top of your list.
Where to stay: Great John Street Hotel, Great John Street, 0870 220 2277, greatjohnstreet.co.uk: special opening offer of £125 per suite, room only (normal rates start at £235). The Lowry Hotel, 50 Deamans Place, Chapel Wharf, 0161-827 4012, roccofortehotels.com; doubles from £230, room only.
Where to eat: Albert's Shed, 20 Castle Street, 0161-839 9818. The Restaurant Bar and Grill, 14 John Dalton Street, 0161-839 1999. Love Saves the Day, 46-50 Oldham Street, 0161-832 0777. Lounge 10, 10 Tib Lane, 0161-834 1331, lounge10manchester.com.
Where to drink: Harvey Nichols, 21 New Cathedral Street, 0161-828 8898. Panacea, 14 John Dalton Street, 0161-833 0000.
Hats off to The Hatters
You wouldn't expect change from 20 quid for a night's accommodation in any British city, let alone one of the coolest. You couldn't hope that it would be anywhere remotely near the action. And only in your dreams would it turn out to be a smart, clean and friendly place to stay.
But one venue in central Manchester delivers all of the above in one of the city's fastest-moving districts. Behind the industrial redbrick facade of a former hat-making factory in the Northern Quarter - until a couple of years ago a wasteland of abandoned warehouses and factories - lies The Hatters, Manchester's only independent hostel.
The last word might stop you in your tracks - yes, there are 165 beds, ranging from variously sized dorm rooms (from £14) to private singles and doubles (£22.50pp), but the interior decor, while functional, is modern and bright: steel frame bunks in the dorms, orange and red sofas adding a splash of colour to the communal areas.
On the doorstep is hip central - the rejuvenated Northern Quarter is sprinkled with quirky clothes shops, vinyl record stores, cafes, bars and clubs. Affleck's Palace is a sprawling alternative indoor market; for live music, Night and Day (Oldham St) showcases up-and-coming bands from around the country; Mint Lounge (Oldham St) serves up a burlesque-style cocktail of entertainment; and Copacabana, as the name suggests, adds a dash of Latin spice with salsa nights.
With more people visiting the city for gigs and weekend breaks, Hatters is attracting travellers and Brits alike, and is in the process of building a lounge/ecafe/chill-out area in the basement to lubricate their guests' stay.
Benji Lanyado The Hatters, 50 Newton St, Northern Quarter, 0161-236 9500, hattersgroup.com.
