Posie

Posie is a new cocktail bar from our favourite team of restaurateurs and bar-owners, the 10 Tib Lane crew. Word has it, their gang colours are chef whites, and their weapon of choice is oyster shucker. 

This is the latest addition to their small but enormously loved mini-empire, which also includes the excellent Henry C in Chorlton. As Manchester grows at a stratospheric rate, it gladdens the heart to see quality-first, unshowy spaces like this open up smack-dab in the very centre of the city. 

You’ll find it in the Bloc building on Marble Street, a short walk off Market Street and probably the most effortlessly elegant drinking space in a half-mile radius. 

Drinkswise, as you’d expect, the cocktails list is class in a glass – you won’t find any sparklers or cocktail umbrellas here (no shade, we’re big fans of the Butlins aesthetic but this is neither the time nor the place). 

There’s natural wine, because of course there is, there’s normal wine (unnatural wine?), there’s craft ale, uncraft ale (need confirmation) and high-end coffee options, because man cannot live on booze alone. 

On launch night, we have a brief whiff of some passing hot food – the pork belly skewers glazed in garlic honey looked and smelled glorious – and ravaged a consummate bitter leaf salad with fennel, pistachio and cherry. The quality is through the Bloc building roof, you won’t be surprised to hear. 

We’ll likely make a follow-up visit in a few months to blaze through the full menu. Stay tuned. 

Finally, is Bar Posie named after 90s scuzzy alt-rock band, The Posies? Almost certainly not. Should it be. Also no. Are The Posies any good? Their cover of ‘Ooh Child’ isn’t bad.