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Taurus, together with 9 other Manchester based organisations/businesses has won the Pink Paper's Gay Restaurant 2007.More info soon on www.pinkpaper.com Customer Comments
Dear Iain, I was in Taurus on Saturday with my mum and family... my mum who is not feeling 100% left her handbag on the back of her chair. She didn't realise this until about 11:30 that evening. I called Taurus and asked if they had seen it or if any one had handed it in. Your staff were friendly, reassuring and calming Luckily for my mum someone had found the bag and handed it in, with nothing missing. I called to collect the bag the following day, and once again your staff were friendly and supportive. They came out to see my mum. They would not accept a gift of a drink, but I would like to pass on my thanks and praise to your staff who were brilliant. Many, many thanks for your efforts to make our Transgender Day of Remembrance Vigil that bit more comfortable. Everybody enjoyed the food and drink (of course!) and were impressed by Taurus's inclusive and welcoming atmosphere. Please thank all the management and staff on our behalf - we'll see you again soon. With love, Felix and Dave of MORF. X X Hi Iain, Polly & all the staff, A very big THANK YOU for helping make our 21st Party such a success. All the Volunteers at Icebreakers. Dear Iain and Mike. About 22 of us turned up in the end. And a goodtime was had by all :-) -And in fact, your staff had to add 2 extra tables. You never know, one day we maybe using the basement private room. As usual,
the food, service and atmosphere was excellent. Can you thank all
your staff for their hard work. |
A
home from home
Alex EyreManchester Evening News. Friday 24/ 1/2008 (click here to read original article) IT'S January, you're skint and the weather's miserable. The last thing you want is to drag your dishevelled New Year finery out of the wash basket and head out for an expensive night at some fashionable new bar which, let's be honest, may or may not live up to the hype. No - instead of glitzy surroundings and pricey drinks, the thing to coax you out of self-imposed hibernation will be something a bit friendlier and lower key. In these trying times, when your credit card's stretched to the limit and the memory of your New Year's Day hangover is fresh in your mind, it's comfy couches, smiling faces and value-for-money food and drink that really appeals. Home from homes, if you will, and, luckily, Manchester has several of these boltholes. Every reader will have a favourite: Atlas, Odd, the original Kro, take your pick. For CityLife's part, our pick of the bunch is Canal Street stalwart Taurus: an independent bar that celebrates seven years in business this year. What makes it so special isn't the décor, which has a distinctly DIY aesthetic, but the service, which is impeccable. The bar team follow the example set by Taurus' welcoming owner/ operators Iain Scott and Mike `Polly' Pollard - themselves strong contenders for the title of Manchester's best hosts. Friendly, chatty, professional and fun, they also manage the holy grail of waiting staff: there exactly when you need them and not when you don't. Taurus' food and drink is far from cutting edge but it's good quality and reasonably priced. The cocktail list includes Long Island Iced Teas, Zombies and Mojitos. But the order of the day here is unpretentious fun, not modern mixology. And their tasty Strawberry Daiquiri (see right) is comfort food in a glass. Busy without being a madhouse, friendly without being over-the-top and a huge success without being arrogant - there's no better place to beat the late January blues. Risa
Hall and Aron Paul,
At long last I broke my two-month late summer drought of gig going (although there are plenty of gigs now in the pipeline for this autumn). My friend Risa rocks and that's a fact! With a new guitarist, Lol, her band's sound has been really lifted into something more upbeat and expansive. Risa has a great range of material - folk, jazz, rock, alt-pop, funk - you name it, she does it. Whatever the genre though, her songs are heartfelt and she sings them with style and panache - and always with an impressive stage presence. There were some great vocal gymnastics too in an Ella Fitzgerald-sounding number. I look forward to a cd one day Risa and it was great to meet up with some of your friends. The downstairs room at Taurus was a chilled place as was Risa's support - the excellent Aron Paul. With his cool voice and deft guitar playing, he made a big impact with his soul vibe helped along with the excellent mix of instruments in his band (bongos, electric bass and electric violin). A special mention must be made of his feisty violinist and her superb playing Taurus is a bustling
chill zone
Liz Mutch--Manchester Evening News. Friday, 24th March 2006 (click here to read original article) TAURUS has established itself as a great community resource in the Gay Village. With chameleon-like charm, it wears many hats for the Canal Street regulars and visitors from everywhere. Acting as a bustling meeting place, Taurus is a world away from the zen-like spaces of saccharin smiles and overwrought interior design that can alienate many potential customers. Taurus is an intimate place across two levels. The main bar is multicoloured and Mediterranean-influenced, with a mass of tables and chairs, fairylights adorning the ceiling and various pot plants. A seated level overlooks the canal and is perfect for people-watching, while towards the bar there are several Chesterfields to chill out on. It is a comfort zone and has the feel of a mate's sitting room. Downstairs is the Joseph Perrier Champagne Lounge, which is available for private functions, screenings and theatre shows, many of which are highly acclaimed fringe productions. Owner Ian Scott is dedicated to environmental improvements within both bar and the Canal Street community, and for that alone his attitude should be applauded. The bar recycles glass and cardboard and he makes a concerted effort to lobby others to do so. Initiatives Ian is also an enthusiastic advocate of local social enterprise, local talent and events. The bar has regular art showcases and at the moment Taurus are urging regulars to support the release of a Turkish political prisoner. Just in time for spring, a new restaurant menu has been launched, featuring a great selection of traditional and vegetarian meals. The quality of the food is above normal bar fare and certainly worth a sample. Ranging from seafood hollandaise for starters, to beef bourguignon or lasagne for mains, the menu is diverse and great value. Dine out on a Sunday and you can get two courses for £7.95. The charismatic Polly, front-of-house supreme diva, has his own happy hour 4-7pm daily when you can slurp away on cocktails for a mere £3 or order in the champers at £20 a bottle. There is also a selection of wine at £5.50. If you want something more from your bar than just glamorous good looks, then Taurus is bound to satisfy Taurus Rising
Richard Hector-Jones: Manchester Evening News. 6th January 2006 (Extracts-click here to read full article) Currently serving some wonderful food in relaxed surroundings is Canal Street's quietly legendary Taurus Bar, a discreet oasis of sanity away right on the main thoroughfare. The bar's reputation as an eaterie is going from strength to strength as gay and lesbian couples pack the intimate space's covers out in order to wine and dine. Taurus's platters, including meze, seafood and dim sum options, are a real draw, as are the chargrilled monkfish skewers, fillet steak rossini and slow-roasted duckling. There's also a strong selection of vegetarian options. Far more than just a bar, Taurus is a two-floored community-focused space and the downstairs room recently hosted a very moving reading from Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen survivor Janni Kowalski, backed up by a interpretive play and songs from Manchester's Lesbian & Gay Chorus Mooving on up
"We've been doing things for two or three years at Taurus," explains actor and producer Hellen Kirby. "We're working towards creating a good fringe in the city." Hellen and her partners' biggest success so far is a play called 3 Gobby Cows, a production that actually started life being performed at Taurus............ "We're currently looking into doing a production of A Taste Of Honey that will represent Salford well. After that there is the possibility of staging a musical at Taurus." Anyone who's been downstairs at Taurus will know it's not the biggest theatre space in Manchester, whatever its aspirations. A musical would certainly be something of a challenge. "I guess so," says Hellen. "But we did manage to stage a comedy farce about a year ago that had six people on one stage at one time, so anything is possible." This level of optimism right on our own doorstep is really encouraging. Particularly as the whole project was borne out of necessity rather than ego. Three Gobby Cows @ Taurus With the recent success of the 24/7 Festival and events like this, it seems as if café theatre - fringe-style events held in places like bars rather than theatres - is finally making welcome inroads in Manchester. Directed by Victoria Munich and presented downstairs in the lively and imaginative Taurus Bar on Canal Street, Newfound Theatre Company's Three Gobby Cows is a collection of three one-woman shows, presented and performed by three different actresses. Based on her own experiences growing up in Ireland's Cork City, Louise Twomey's Women's Little Christmas is a bitter-sweet piece that had members of last night's packed audience finally shocked into some tears after their laughter. Kate Henry's Mucking Fuddle was another dynamically performed and intelligent piece where serious concerns found expression amid the laughter at what initially seemed to be just another chronicle of a Monday morning gone horribly wrong. Finally, Deborah Brian's Sandra found the desperate and unhappy titular character nonetheless able to ruminate amusingly on the way happy couples shopped together in Sainsbury's and even on the romantic possibilities of Greggs the bakers. Hugely entertaining and heartfelt, this is a show that puts some of this town's bigger name companies and venues to shame Manchester Food Guide "The staff at Taurus are justified in priding themselves on the guarantee of a warm welcome whoever you are and this unpretentious independent bar and restaurant is a refreshing addition to Manchester’s Village. The menu has a good range of dishes to suit all appetites throughout the day, from ‘light bites’ at £2.95, a three-course dinner or Sunday lunch at £7.50 for two courses or £10.00 for three. We went the whole hog sampling moist salmon, cod and tarragon fishcakes (£4.20), a stuffed open mushroom with blue cheese and walnuts (£3.95), and fillet steak and rossini served with sauté potatoes (£10.95). The house white, Calwood’s 2001 (Australia) at £10.00 was well selected, being both dry and full-bodied and offers a clue to the quality of the wine list. Fresh strawberries and cream (£2.95) finished off an excellent meal made even more enjoyable by the laid-back ambience and well-chosen music. This truly is sophisticated dining for grown-ups. Bar'd from the Potting
Shed DOWN in the Big Smoke, the upstairs rooms of pubs are not exclusively reserved for fork-and-finger buffets at parties with your most common relatives. These function rooms are being revived as small-scale theatres for low-budget productions that can’t afford the West End. It’s a trend that has yet to fully infiltrate Manchester, although the King’s Arms over the river in Salford has recently reinvented itself as a performance venue for music and drama. Taurus is the first venue in the Village to follow suit. Their rather elegant Joseph Perrier Lounge has long been home to numerous community groups who hold meetings there during the week but, following a successful trial earlier this year, its potential as an intimate performance space is being realised. This week sees the return of Bar’d Theatre Company’s production of The Potting Shed - a series of bittersweet monologues by Beth Lomas. Obvious influences would appear to be Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood, since the play’s setting is a small Northern town and the drama revolves around a TV horticultural guru known as the garden tart, a champion pumpkin grower and a part-time councillor who has plans to decimate a local beauty spot. Performed by David Slack, co-founder of the forthcoming 24:7 theatre festival, and student Kenan Ally (pictured), The Potting Shed offers a distinctly different night out in the Village and an even more pressing excuse to visit the City Life Bar of the Year "Welcome arrival on the Village scene, this open-minded establishment is perky in it decor and atmosphere. The main room sports a terracotta wall on one side and a dusty blue wall on the other. There is a tiny, tiny, green room with sofas designed to imbue calm and tranquillity. The food is very good and very reasonable in price with a Med. inspiration. Note the tiny dance-floor if the mood takes. The service is warm and personable, led by one of the city's better hosts, Iain Scott, formerly of Metz. Taurus, by the way, is Iain's star sign."
Polly seems to have been involved in getting nearly every new venture in the village off the ground over the last number of years (we were too polite to ask just how many) and how he's kicking off a new restaurant, Taurus, offering the discerning customer a wide-range of mouth-watering food and drink .... all held together with his unique style and a fresh approach to service ... "Lifestyle is an important element in the culture and ethos of Taurus. We look forward to inviting everyone to sample the gastronomic delights and fabulous senense of camp humour that this restaurant will offer them" Taurus couldn't be better located for a nosh before taking on the varied scene that Manchester has to offer and the warm, comfortable, friendly and fun atmosphere should prove a winner and add to the city's award-winning restaurant scene. BBC Manchester - Village Bars Review from Paul Graham: What's it all about? where's it at? rating: The destination guide: Positioned at number 1 Canal Street, this new independent bar and restaurant has a pleasant and laid-back disposition better suited to earth-signs. The food is great and fortunately escapes the star-sign theme being extended to it. So, no Capricorn-on-the-cob just yet." |
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THE
phrase 'from little acorns...' has a nice ring to it and applies to
the downstairs of Taurus perhaps more than anywhere else in the gay
village. For not only is the space given out to various business,
social and encounter groups on a regular basis, it's also become something
of a stepping stone for fringe theatre in the city; a theatre that,
by all knowledgeable accounts, is presently poorly catered for.
in 
Deep
in the heart of Manchester's gay village a new eaterie has just
recently opened under the directorship of one of the village's most
famous and colourful characters Mike Pollard - aka Polly.