Manchester restaurant announces new opening after High Court battle

A popular Manchester restaurant which recently underwent a rebrand following a High Court battle is set to open a new restaurant.

Italiana Fifty Five, formerly known as Cibo, already has two sites in Manchester, one at Great Northern Warehouse and another on Liverpool Road, but has now unveiled plans to open a third restaurant in the former Croma site in Didsbury village. The much-loved pizza restaurant closed for good in May following the closure of its city centre flagship in January 2022.

Signs reading 'Coming Soon' with the Italiana Fifty Five branding have appeared in the windows at the former Croma site and posts have appeared online teasing the new opening. Posted in the last week, owners wrote on Instagram: "We're expanding. As if changing our name wasn't exciting enough, you'll soon be able to find us in...Didsbury Village."

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The small Italian chain changed rebranded to Italiana Fifty Five after it was sued by another restaurant group also using the name Cibo, which means food in Italian. The other Cibo, which has restaurants Cibo Hale and Cibo Wilmslow, claimed that the chain were using the name without consent, while the bosses of the Cibo restaurants in Manchester claimed their sites opened long before the Hale and Wilmslow restaurants.

Owners of the Hale and Wilmslow restaurants also claimed that the Manchester Cibo restaurants offered discount deals while they did not, alleging that such offers damaged their reputation. In June, owners of the former Manchester Cibo sites decided to rebrand their restaurants rather than pursue the legal fight with the owners of Cibo Hale and Cibo Wilmslow.

In a statement,