Manchester restaurant Habas has made it into the prestigious Michelin guide just six months after opening its doors in the city.
The restaurant is the creation of esteemed chef Simon Shaw, who also has the two-AA Rosette and Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant El Gato Negro, as well as Canto (which has been newly-awarded a Michelin Plate) in Ancoats.
It opened in the lower level of the historic Manchester Reform Club building in June to mixed reviews.
Inside Habas. Credit: Supplied
However, it seems the naysayers are to be mostly ignored, as it’s already caught the eye of inspectors at Michelin, who advise diners to ‘arrive early for a cocktail in the bar before moving into the fun, slightly retro-style dining room’.
The guide continues: “Small sharing plates take their influences mainly from the Middle East but there are also hints of the Mediterranean to be seen.
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“Must-haves include the homemade pita bread, stuffed filo cigars and vegetable dishes.”
Food at Habas in Manchester. Credit: Joby Catto Photography
Housed inside the building’s former wine cellar, the menu follows a similar format to Shaw’s other popular Spanish and Portuguese-style city-centre restaurants – with a strong focus on small plates, ordered to share.
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Speaking on the inclusion of Habas in MICHELIN’s fourth live release of the year, Shaw said: “First and foremost I’m absolutely delighted. For a business that’s been such a long time in the making and yet still very much in its infancy its remarkable. It’s all credit to Craig, Kelly and their respective teams who are doing an incredible job.”
Habas is one of 12 Manchester restaurants recommended in this year’s guide, alongside Adam Reid at The French, Allotment vegan eatery, Tast, El Gato Negro, Porta Tapas, Canto, The Bull and Bear, 63 Degrees, Erst, Mana, and OSMA.
The restaurant has just introduced a new Sunday roast offering, with two options available and an option to bring your own wine for just an additional £5 corkage fee.
The announcement follows a new approach announced by Michelin this summer, which sees the guide announce new additions on a monthly basis for the very first time.
Usually, these are only revealed at the annual launch event – but we have to say, we’re enjoying the new approach, as it gives us something new to look forward to every month, instead of having to wait a whole year.
The most prestigious awards, however -Stars, Bib Gourmands and Green Stars – will be announced at the annual 2022 ceremony as usual. So we’ve still got a bit of a wait for those.
Featured image: Supplied
Food & Drink
This Manchester bar serves a bottomless cheese fondue with endless beer and wine
Georgina Pellant
There’s a bar in Manchester serving a bottomless cheese fondue with endless wine and beer, and it honestly sounds like the perfect treat.
While it might scream cosy winter night in, with a huge outdoor terrace, The Mews is also a firm favourite during the summer months.
Add in a board of melt-in-the-mouth charcuterie, springy pieces of garlic sourdough and a host of crunchy cheese biscuits, and you’ve got yourself the ideal afternoon if you ask us.
But there’s more. Alongside all that cheese and meat and bread, included in the price of The Mews’ bottomless fondue, cheese lovers can also enjoy 90 minutes of non-stop drinks.
Bottomless cheese fondue at The Mews on Deansgate in Manchester. (Credit: The Manc Eats)
Costing £37.50 each, included in the deal is a huge pot of melted Italian Fontina cheese served with homemade garlic croutons, sourdough crackers, and slices of British charcuterie.
You’ll also get to enjoy an hour and a half of endless pints of house pilsner and carafes of red or white wine to enjoy alongside.
Serving up to six people, the bottomless cheese fondue is available only when you pre-book, so make sure to get in touch ahead of your visit to let The Mews know that you’re coming.
If you’re not on the sauce, you can opt for the cheese fondue alone. Without the booze, it’s quite a bit cheaper at £25 for one, and £2.50 on top for any additional people who want to get stuck in.
Housed up on Deansgate Mews, just behind the main hustle and bustle of Deansgate, there’s plenty of space inside as well as a large, secluded terrace that is quite the suntrap (when the Manchester sun is shining).
‘The average cost of a pint’ in the UK by region, according to the latest data
Danny Jones
Does it feel like pints keep getting more and more expensive almost every week at this point? Yes. Yes, it does, and while you can’t expect a city as big as Manchester to be one of the cheapest places to get one in the UK, we do often wonder how it compares to other parts of the country.
Well, as it happens, someone has recently crunched the numbers for us across the nation, breaking down which regions pay the most and the least for their pints.
The data has been examined by business management consultancy firm, CGA Strategy, using artificial intelligence and information from the latest Retail Price Index figures to find out what the ‘average cost of a pint’ is down south, up North and everywhere in between.
While the latest statistics provided by the group aren’t granular enough to educate us on Greater Manchester’s pint game exactly, we can show you how our particular geographic region is looking on the leaderboard at the moment.
That’s right, we Mancunians and the rest of the North West are technically joint mid-table when it comes to the lowest average cost of a pint, sharing the places from 3rd to 8th – according to CGA, anyway.
Powered by consumer intelligence company, NIQ (NielsenIQ) – who also use AI and the latest technology to deliver their insights – we can accept it might seem like it’s been a while since you’ve paid that little for a pint, especially in the city centre, but these are the stats they have published.
Don’t shoot the messenger, as they say; unless, of course, they’re trying to rob you blind for a bev. Fortunately, we’ve turned bargain hunting at Manchester bars into a sport at this point.
We might not boast the lowest ‘average’ pint cost in the UK, but we still have some bloody good places to keep drinking affordable.
London tops the charts (pretends to be shocked)
While some of you may have scratched your eyes at the supposed average pint prices here in the North West, it won’t surprise any of you to see that London leads the way when it came to the most expensive pint when it came to average cost in the UK.
To be honest, £5.44 doesn’t just sound cheap but virtually unheard of these days.
CGA has it that the average cost of a beer in the British capital is actually down 15p from its price last September, but as we all know, paying upwards of £7 for a pint down that end of the country is pretty much par for the course the closer you get to London.
Yet more reason you can be glad you live around here, eh? And in case you thought you were leaving this article with very little, think again…
Georgina Pellant -
24th November 2021 
