Manchester's lavish 1761 restaurant has closed its doors.
The independent restaurant - and its downstairs bar Lily's - opened at a cost of £1m in the former Avalanche unit on Booth Street in November 2017.
Signs appeared in the the window in August explaining the closure was due to owners 'upgrading [the] extraction system' and promising it would 'be back soon'.
But several weeks later, the phone line is dead, the windows are whitewashed and the restaurant's website has vanished. There have been no posts on its social media accounts since May.
According to the Land Registry, the Booth Street building was sold in July for a whopping £2.68 million.
The restaurant got off to a shaky start when it announced plans to keep live stingrays in a fish tank as part of its ostentatious fit-out.
Owners quickly backtracked on the idea when it came under fire from animal-lovers, who branded it a 'cruel gimmick' .
The restaurant went on to receive praise for its modern British menu , however.
The downstairs bar, Lily's, was originally billed as a champagne bar named after Madame Lily Bollinger, but later rebranded itself as a live music amd drag venue which owners then claimed was named after suffragette Lily Maxwell.
The M.E.N has contacted the owners of 1761 and Lily's for a comment.
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