New on Guides: Manchester’s best-known restaurant group

With its terrace overlooking Albert Square and Manchester Town Hall, and a beautiful interior featuring a 40-seater private dining room, an open kitchen, and an oyster bar, Piccolino Caffé Grande Manchester is a real destination restaurant. (And, notably, it’s one that doesn’t price people out of the experience.)

From the same team behind Piccolino, Riva Blu Manchester aims to bring a little bit of La Dolce Vita to The Corn Exchange. With a sleek cocktail bar, open kitchen, and alfresco terrace, it’s styled on the high-society glamour of the 1960s, and “modern Italian” cuisine is the name of the game.

With its large alfresco terrace, complete with a fully retractable roof, Piccolino Didsbury is perfectly located for an Aperol Spritz in the sun or a full three-course meal inspired by the diverse cuisine from all of Italy’s regions.

There’s no shortage of reliably good restaurants in the Hale-Altrincham-Bowden triangle, and Piccolino Hale is up there with the best of them.

Piccolino Knutsford fits in perfectly with the Italianate villas and chic shops of this quirky Cheshire town. Situated on the narrow, buzzy High Street, it offers alfresco rooftop dining, a semi-private area for groups, and a second-floor bar.

Piccolino Liverpool is located in a particularly grand building on Cook Street with a small but perfectly-formed terrace at the front. The impressive exterior seems appropriate because Piccolino always works well for fancy events, birthday parties and glamorous dates.

With its six foot chandelier and gold leaf ceiling Restaurant Bar & Grill Liverpool is one of the city’s most spectacular dining settings. A £500k refurbishment in 2021 brought to life the original features of this Grade II Listed heritage building. Now it’s one of the most photogenic backdrops in Liverpool, and the food’s not half bad too.

With its large alfresco terrace, island bar, and handsome architecture, Riva Blu Liverpool has a chic, continental feel inside and out.

Housed in a Grade II Listed building with a neo-classical facade, Chester’s Opera Grill is a grand, 400-seater restaurant from Individual Restaurants (the team behind Piccolino and the Restaurant Bar and Grill).

Riva Blu Leeds, an Italian restaurant on Park Row, used be part of the Gino d’ACampo chain before the north’s own Individual Restaurants group stepped in and gave it one almighty glow-up.

The food, service and setting now gets consistently good ratings online – it’s a popular place and we can see why.