| Greens | |
| City: | West Didsbury, Manchester |
| Country: | England |
| Chef: | Simon Rimmer |
| Website: | https://greensrestaurants.co.uk/ |
Greens was a restaurant at 41 to 43 Lapwing Lane in West Didsbury. An existing vegetarian restaurant, Greens was reopened in 1990 by Simon Rimmer and Simon Connolly after they spotted it in a pub, and Rimmer became its chef after discovering that they could not afford to hire someone. The restaurant appeared in the AA guide for 31 of the next 33 years, became the first purely vegetarian restaurant to appear in The Good Food Guide, and has appeared on a number of 'best of' lists, with MasterChef winner Simon Wood spending a period cooking there between winning and setting up his own restaurant. A sister restaurant opened in Sale, Greater Manchester, in July 2022, which remained open after the West Didsbury branch closed in 2024 as part of a cost-of-living crisis.
Simon Rimmer met his business partner Simon Connolly while working at a café in Didsbury; one was a waiter, while the other worked front of house.[1] In 1990, Rimmer was working as a part-time designer and as a lecturer, and Connolly was working as a restaurant hotel manager;[2] at the time, Didsbury was not a particularly pleasant place to live, with Rimmer using a 2024 piece in ManchestersFinest.com to observe that, at the time, drug deals behind the car park of the nearby Metropolitan gastropub were commonplace.[3] While eating a Nepalese curry and drinking beer, Rimmer and Connolly noticed a small vegetarian café, and wondered if it could be converted into a proper vegetarian restaurant; by chance, Rimmer happened to drive past the next day as a 'for sale' sign was going up, and the pair bought the restaurant twelve weeks later, using £2,000 they had between them and £40,000 from the bank. At the time, they were under the impression that they would have enough money to employ a chef and that they could spend their time chatting up women; having discovered that they did not, they tossed a coin to see who would learn to cook, which Rimmer lost.[4]
The restaurant, which the pair kept vegetarian in order to keep its existing clientele,[5] was opened in 1990, and was successful enough that Rimmer and Connolly could afford to open other restaurants. The restaurant closed for a month in 2007; when it reopened, it had almost doubled in size.[6] Simon Wood, who won the 2015 series of MasterChef, worked at Greens for period shortly after winning before setting up his own restaurant, Wood. Rimmer later opened a sister restaurant of the same name in Stanley Square in Sale, Greater Manchester in July 2022, with the kitchen a converted bank vault, and the interiors inspired by The Butcher's Daughter, an American plant-based restaurant;[7] upon opening, the branch attracted attention on social media for its use of unisex public toilets.[8] The West Didsbury restaurant announced its immediate closure in January 2024 after the landlord increased rent by 35% and its energy costs quintupled. The closure came within a challenging period for restaurateurs, with eight restaurants closing every day, and later that month, Rimmer and several other restaurants called for Rishi Sunak, the then-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to halve value-added tax.
Within two years, the restaurant had appeared in the AA guide, spending 31 of 33 years there, and became the first purely vegetarian restaurant to appear in The Good Food Guide; by the time of its temporary 2007 closure, it was one of six. ManchestersFinest.com credited the restaurant with improving the profile of Didsbury. Jonathan Schofield of Confidentials.com visited Greens in March 2015, and noted that Rimmer "provides clever vegetarian food with a bit of fun added in".[9] SquareMeal described Greens as "arguably the North's leading vegetarian restaurant" in January 2019 and found the atmosphere "buzzy and laid-back".[10] The Daily Telegraph listed it as one of the "top restaurants for vegetarians in the UK" in May 2019[11] and as one of the "16 best restaurants in Manchester" in April 2023.[12]
Ria Ghey of Manchesterworld.uk wrote in October 2023 that the "eclectic interior of Parisian-inspired artwork and frill-tastic lamp gave a welcoming vibe befitting a bustling neighbourhood restaurant".[13] Rob Martin used a May 2021 Time Out review to describe dining at the restaurant in its early days "felt a bit like being invited to dine with a really sophisticated friend's family; slightly bohemian but very professional with two lovely blokes at the helm", noted that "the food was a revelation for many used to veggie meals consisting of just lentils and something mushy", and that the restaurant remained "the delightful experience it always has been, somehow still managing to feel like you're in someone's home".[14]