Restaurant Wars: The Battle For Manchester to start on BBC 2 featuring Simon Rogan and Aiden Byrne

Restaurant Wars: The Battle For Manchester is a three-part documentary series following the story of two of Britain's best, most passionate chefs who each try to open a competing, fine dining restaurant in the same city, at the same time, just 200 yards from one another.

Simon Rogan is one of the most revered chefs of his generation, holding two Michelin stars at his restaurant L'Enclume in Cumbria, which also recently became the Good Food Guide's best restaurant, knocking The Fat Duck off the top spot. Aiden Byrne is still the youngest chef ever to have been awarded a Michelin star at the age of 21. Now 40 years old, Byrne has been out of the fine dining arena for some time but is desperate to be back cooking at that level and has the culinary skill and the financial backing to get there.

Now both chefs have their sights set on launching the best restaurant in Manchester, a city that so far has resisted the offerings of top chefs and fine dining menus and has not had a Michelin starred restaurant for over 30 years. Simon is set to transform the fine dining restaurant at the Midland Hotel, a building of historical significance and a Manchester institution. Aiden has a budget of over £3 million to create a vast, glitzy warehouse conversion in a modern office block. The food, the restaurants and their budgets couldn't be more different, but both think they're worthy of Michelin and Manchester stardom.

Filmed over a year in 2013, the programme shows the chefs opening their kitchens and restaurants to the cameras, giving a rare insight in to what it takes to build, open and run a restaurant at the very top level.

It explores the secret world of menu conception, the intricacies of design and build, the difficulties of staffing and training and the passion and pain of culinary genius. At the heart of the story are two men whose love and skill for cooking is what drives them against the colossal risk of opening a world-class restaurant in the middle of a recession. Set against the backdrop of one of the UK's most exciting cities, with two of the food scene's biggest personalities and a very particular public - the battle for Manchester begins.

Restaurant Wars: The Battle For Manchester begins on BBC 2 on Monday 14^th April 8 - 9pm.