At last, the boozers are open. Even better, we can finally sit inside them.
Hopefully, this means no more battling it out against the elements with our anoraks and brollies – although those scenes did make us very proud of our fellow Mancs’ commitment to their locals.
Still, if you’re planning a big one it can soon add up price-wise. Especially if you’re paying over a fiver per pint, which has pretty much become the norm for anywhere selling craft beer in the city centre.
Suffice to say, after a year of not really going out and just over a month back at it, we’ve all been feeling a bit skint.
But there is some great value beer out there for the drinking – if you know where to look.
ADVERTISEMENT
We asked, and you delivered. If you know of any more, let us know @themanc and we’ll add them in here.
Sinclair’s Oyster Bar is well-known for its cheap pints / Image: Wikimedia Commons
Sinclair’s Oyster Bar, Shambles Square
ADVERTISEMENT
The most suggested pub on the list by a mile, this black and white Samuel Smiths boozer off Shambles Square is one of Manchester’s most iconic. Famously moved after the 1996 IRA bomb to its current spot just a few yards down, it wins hands down on both value and aesthetic. Note to tourists, they don’t actually sell oysters here.
2 pints at £2.20. Dark mild and Alpine lager.
The Courtyard, Chester Street
ADVERTISEMENT
The cost of Carling at this popular student bar has increased by a whopping 5 pence a pint since the start of the pandemic whilst other spots in town have put theirs up by several pounds. It’s also huge, with plenty of tables inside as well as in its namesake courtyard.
Carling, £2.60
Hare & Hounds, Shudehill
With completely intact interiors dating back to 1925, this pretty pub is considered to be of some historic national importance. Popular with Manchester’s mature drinkers and sports fans, it’s got regular entertainment on here and pre-covid was quite well known for its karaoke.
Two pints at £2.70, Holt Bitter and Mild.
ADVERTISEMENT
The City Pub, Oldham Street
This grade II-listed one-room pub at the top end of the Northern Quarter is full of characters in the day but typically quieter in the evening. For a time you could find some good real ale here, but it left the CAMRA fold in 2018 due to falling sales and now is very much keg over cask.
Joseph Holt Smooth £2.00, Boddingtons £2.10 (on happy hour, prices increase by 50p after 6pm).
Abel Heywood,Northern Quarter
This bar and boutique hotel is named after a former mayor of Manchester, as is, coincidentally, the town hall clock ‘Great Abel’ which can often be heard chiming across the city centre. Close to the Arndale, it’s a good, quiet place to head for a cold one when you’ve had enough of shopping.
ADVERTISEMENT
£3.45 Hydes Original Bitter.
Seven Oaks, Chinatown
Located just off Mosley Street, this classic pub is a favourite of city centre locals, bored shoppers and off-duty bartenders alike. It also runs a ‘husband creche’ on the weekend.
Seven Oaks ale, £2.50
Trof, Northern Quarter
ADVERTISEMENT
One of the Northern Quarter originals, due to its slightly hidden location in the midst of many new bars and restaurants, Trof is shamefully easy to forget about nowadays. At £3.50 a pint for its house lager it’s definitely stretching the boundaries of ‘cheap’ but deserves a shoutout nonetheless – much like its brilliant roast dinners.
Trof Lager £3.50 (on happy hour 4pm – 8pm, Monday-Friday).
Brickhouse Social NWS, New Wakefield Street
This New York-themed diner and bar boasts a pool room, roof terrace and ‘day of the dead’ themed basement club. Find it just off Oxford Road.
BH Lager, £2.50
ADVERTISEMENT
The Footage, Oxford Road
Formerly known as the Grosvenor Picture Palace, this student haunt still retains many of the charms from its cinematic heyday. At £3.45 for Carling, it’s pushing the boundaries of what we can really consider cheap, but their craft beers can be bought for £3 during happy hours with a choice of Punk IPA and 4-5 rotating guest beers.
£3 craft beers (on happy hour, Tuesdays and Thursdays).
The Friendship Inn, Fallowfield
Another great student drinking spot, The Friendship’s got a great sun trap beer garden with seating that goes all the way around the pub. Indoors, there’s plenty of big screens to catch the football on, too.
ADVERTISEMENT
Holston Pilsner £2.10 (on happy hour, 12-6 Monday to Friday)
The Victoria, Withington
This cosy little Victorian boozer in Withington mixes students and locals quite happily, with a big screen for sports and a popular pool table inside. There’s a good weekly quiz here on Thursdays and live Motown nights on the first Saturday of the month, plus a nice little beer garden out back that catches the sun in the afternoon.
£2.50 Holston
The Red Lion, Withington
Another very decent Withington pub, this one’s set just off Wilmslow road heading towards The Christie. Spacious inside and out with some cute little nooks and crannies, it boasts a large terrace area overlooking the bowling green and some decent pub grub.
ADVERTISEMENT
2 pints at £3.05. Manchester Pale Ale and and Dark.
The Blue Bell Inn in Levenshulme has some good beers at great value / Image: Geograph
The Blue Bell Inn, Levenshulme
A very smart Samuel Smith’s pub, The Blue Bell Inn was fully refurbished to a high standard around 2006. Spacious inside with a large garden to the rear, it’s at the heart of the community with a variety of groups using the pub to raise funds for local improvement projects. There’s even a knitting club.
2 pints at £2.20. Dark Mild and Alpine lager.
Featured image: Pixabay
Feature
Hardcastle Crags – the prettiest autumn walk in the North West with a great restaurant at the end
Daisy Jackson
This is the time of year where it’s particularly difficult to drag yourself off the sofa and into the great outdoors.
The weather isn’t quite crisp enough to feel festive and most of us (even the pumpkin spice latte, cardigan-clad crew) are missing the more reliable warmth of the summer months.
But autumn is here, like it or not, and it definitely has its perks.
One of which is the undeniable beauty the season brings.
It’s not just the blazing red, orange, yellow and brown leaves that suddenly take over the green spaces around the UK.
It’s also in the sunsets and sunrises that become so much easier to catch while the days are shorter (you have to admit, the commutes are prettier when they coincide with sunrise).
The riverside walk at Hardcastle Crags. Credit: Unsplash
And there aren’t many places better to soak in all the autumn beauty than Hardcastle Crags, just across the border in West Yorkshire.
The National Trust site sits between Leeds and Manchester and is a popular day trip destination for Mancs, given the trains that run regularly to Hebden Bridge.
A walking route around Hardcastle Crags at this time of year will take you through a landscape of blazing orange trees, babbling streams, and dappled sunlight.
When you catch a golden autumnal day the leaves will crunch underfoot, but even on a soggy day the leaf mulch has its own special kind of beauty here.
There are two walking routes between the main car park and Gibson Mill, a former 19th century cotton mill which is now home to a lovely cafe.
One will take you down to the river, where wooden boardwalks weave right along the water’s edge.
There are even stepping stones you can use to scamper across the river – a great Instagram pic, or just a way to keep the kids entertained for a few minutes.
A walk around Hardcastle Crags in Autumn. Credit: The Manc Group
The other route goes up through the upper woodland, where pine trees loom and you get a great view of the valley below.
For an easy loop, you can do both – a stroll through the trees, a stop for coffee and cake, then return along the river (or vice versa).
But with 15 miles of footpaths, you can explore way beyond that.
The National Trust’s list of walks includes everything from a wheelchair and pram-accessible estate track to peaceful woodland loops, to rocky scrambles and former railway lines.
And when you’re done with Hardcastle Crags itself, there’s a world-class restaurant in the gorgeous town centre itself.
Coin sits in the shell of the former Lloyd’s bank, with exposed brick and massive period windows, and specialises in natural wine and small plates.
When The Manc Eats visited, we found plates of freshly-cut meat and cheese served alongside ice-cold batched classic cocktails, where ‘quality is key, and it shines through on the plate’.
Our reviewer said: “With its higgledy-piggledy stone mill houses, surrounding woodland, hidden waterfalls and treasure-trove charity shops, Hebden Bridge is a popular attraction all of its own for those wanting to venture beyond the city. Coin is simply the cherry on top.”
In celebration of Momo Shop: a Chorlton favourite that has flourished since its rebrand
Danny Jones
It’s not often we go out of our way to hammer home just how staggering we found a restaurant, but after now losing track of the number of times that a member of our team has eaten at Momo Shop in Chorlton and come back near speechless, it deserves more than a review.
We regularly hold ourselves back and resist the urge to talk in superlatives wherever possible, especially because we worry we might be falling into the recency bias trap, but in this instance, we’re going to go out on a limb and fall on our hospitality sword. Well, this particular writer is…
It’s official: Momo Shop Nepali Street Food – for our money, anyway – is up there with one of THE best restaurants in Manchester right now.
And there are plenty of reasons why, not least of all because of the years of practice they have feeding increasingly discerning Manc diners under a different moniker.
Simple but charming – all the focus is on the foodAnd the food speaks for itselfSome of the most flavourful fillings you’ll find in ManchesterBusy any given night of the weekNo review (Credit: The Manc Eats/Momo Shop via Instagram)
If you don’t live in/frequent Chorlton, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that this gaff was a somewhat new addition to Chorlton, but in actual fact it’s been gradually growing a loyal and passionate following for more than seven years.
This is because before the miniamlist rebrand that saw the walls stripped back, the exterior painted blue and cutesy little bits of artwork hung amidst that familiar and atmospheric festoon lighting, Momo Shop was once The Little Yeti.
Its former iteration boasted hundreds of glowing reviews in its own right, which already plated up plenty of stunning Nepalese food, but since switching primarily towards serving a menu primarily made up of momos (Tibetan-style fried dumplings hand-folded into various shapes) they’ve well and truly shone.
Now approaching a full 12 months under the new name, the Nepali street food spot isn’t just one of a relatviely small handful considering how much great South Asian food there is across Greater Manchester, we’d wager it could be the very best representing that Alpine-Himalayan belt in our region.
Our latest visit was genuinely just as good as our first, second, third and so on – take your pick.
From the simply incredible deep fried pork dumplings and the deeply moorish butter sauce that goes with literally any momo filling, to the super traditional buffalo ones that are not only authentic but, come on, where else can you find such a unique meat in these parts? It’s some of the best food we’ve eaten.
And we don’t just mean of late; Momo Shop might genuinely among of the nicest scran we’ve had in ages and it’s no exagerration to say that the first taste we enjoyed from many of these flavours have formed some of the strongest culinary memories we’ve created in quite a while.
It’s also worth nothing that it isn’t just one main snack-sized dish. The chow mein, keema noodles and cheesy chops are showstoppers themselves, and we’ve already booked in again for a 30th birthday celebration purely so we can try those lambs ribs and their take on a shashlick.
Nevertheless, we love the idea of the numerous configurations and concotions by pairing different dumplings and owner Niti Karki gave us some pro-tips of the best duos and even let us in on the trade secret of her go-to combo when she’s hungover. Legend.
Once again, at the risk of sounding too hyperbolic, odd moments have felt like core foodie memories on a par with our favourite all-time meals.
Personally, I’m glad to report that this isn’t just a review: consider this a declaration that Momo Shop has quickly become my favourite restaurant not just in Chorlton but in all of central Manchester, something I haven’t had since the heartbreaking closure of Cocktail Beer Ramen + Bun in 2023.
Plenty of varietyDamn straightNiti = absolute iconWe’ll keep your condiment secret forever, Niti…
There might be an element of the almost HakkaPo-esque style drawings, the colour palette and the carefully curated pop-punk, old school emo and post-hardcore playlist that’s over half a decade in the making that makes particualrly partial to this place
But before we wrap up this glorified love letter parading as a ‘review’, we also want to give a special nod to the charming staff and Niti’s mum, specficially, who was too modest to even let us share her picture, but whose wealth of wisdom, influence and experience has clearly inspired Momo Shop’s success.
Don’t be shy, Sue – the only thing more stylish than the food was you, girl. Pop off.
Put simply, we’ll be going back here as regularly as possible until we try every different momo + sauce variation there is, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us.
If you are in the mood for more dumpling excellence, by the way, you might want to check out the unassuming Northern Quarter gem that is Chef Diao.
Georgina Pellant -
4th June 2021 
