‘We tried so hard’ - Chef Mary-Ellen McTague closes her Chorlton restaurant The Creameries
manchestereveningnews.co.ukMary-Ellen McTague has confirmed that her Chorlton restaurant The Creameries has sadly closed down for good. Despite reviews from national critics, and a recent revamp with an Italian menu, the celebrated chef has said a combination of the hangover from the pandemic and rising costs made the business no longer viable. “The whole thing has been awful, but it has been like that since the beginning of the pandemic,” she told the Manchester Evening News.
She had been trying to sell the business for some months, but had a number of potential buyers pull out at the last minute. “There was still a chance we were going to make a sale.
We had three consecutive buyers who were very close, and then backed away,” she went on. “The longer the economic instability has gone on, the more and more nervous [buyers] have been.” READ MORE: The ten best things to check out at this year’s Manchester Food and Drink Festival Mary-Ellen, formerly a sous chef at Heston Blumenthal’s multi Michelin-starred Fat Duck and then co-owner of Aumbry in Prestwich, opened The Creameries in 2018 on the site of a former dairy.
The Observer’s Jay Rayner noted its ‘seriously good, thoughtful food’ in a rave review a year or so later. “In September 2019, we started operating just as a restaurant, doing tasting menus, and it was working so well,” she said. “We had a brilliant Jay Rayner review, it was packed, we were making money, not just keeping afloat.
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