A new luxury chocolate cafe has opened in Manchester today, bringing a huge range of chocolate milkshakes, iced chocolate, hot chocolates and mochas with it.
Called Knoops, it has taken over a former dry cleaners shop on the corner of Cross Street and South King Street close to the Town Hall.
Offering twenty different styles of hot chocolate and six styles of rich and creamy chocolate milkshakes, on the menu there is a huge range of different percentage chocolates available to choose from – but seating is minimal inside.
With room for just 14 covers in total, it makes for a cosy little chocolate lover’s haven: offering the ultimate drinks personalisation process with a four-step method designed to create your perfect chocolate drink.
Customers can choose their preferred hot or cold drink, followed by their chocolate percentage, then their milk, before finally enhancing their drink with tasty add-ons such as lavender, freshly grated orange zest, matcha, vanilla, and other various herbs and spices.
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The drink is poured out as a smooth hot chocolate, over cold milk and ice for iced chocolate, and can be blended with ice cream for a delicious milkshake.
With twenty different percentages of chocolate to choose from, options will range from a 28% cocoa white chocolate to a 100% extra dark variety with a menu featuring single origin blends from Peru, Congo, Tanzania, Uganda, Ecuador, Venezuela, Columbia, The Solomon Islands and Mexico.
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Any and all hot chocolates and iced chocolates using 54 percent chocolate or above can also be made vegan.
To accompany all that liquid chocolate, the new Knoops cafe also features a bakery selling locally-made fresh pastries and cakes with a counter featuring the likes of cannolis, pain au chocolat, marbled cookies, croissants and more.
The brand is led by international chocolatier Jens Knoop, who founded his brand on the original concept of Knoopology: the art of crafting the perfect chocolate drink.
At the heart of the brand is his own passion for chocolate. Jens has had a strong relationship with chocolate since his childhood in rural Germany.
In 2013, he decided to share his passion and opened the first Knoops store in Rye, East Sussex. Having observed that chocolate drinks were so often underloved; an afterthought on café menus or the preserve of high-end chocolatiers, he set about creating a business fully centered on drinking chocolate, both hot and cold.
He started to experiment, making the truly personalised drinks that you can enjoy in Knoops today, and he’s built up an encyclopedic knowledge of the taste profiles of many different chocolates.
Jens has spent the last eight years (about 10,000 hours) perfecting these drinks combining different percentage cocoas, with a range of milks and fruits, roots and spices.
He named this process “Knoopology” – and it’s an ongoing journey, with new flavour combinations still being discovered.
The shop is Knoops’ very first in the north of England, and marks the tenth opening for the fast-growing artisan cafe chain which already has other locations in London, Rye, Brighton, Oxford and Cambridge.
Featured image – The Manc Eats
City Centre
Timings confirmed for Manchester’s legendary Dragon Parade to celebrate Chinese New Year 2025
Emily Sergeant
Manchester’s legendary Dragon Parade will make its way through the city centre once again next weekend.
As Manchester gets ready to celebrate Chinese New Year 2025 – which begins next Wednesday (29 January) and runs through to Sunday 2 February – and mark the ‘Year of the Snake’, the iconic Dragon Parade will be making its grand return to the streets of our city centre next weekend, and bring a spectacular show of colour and light along with it.
In case you’re unfamiliar with what the Dragon Parade is all about, it’s the focal point of the city’s annual Lunar New Year celebrations – and it’s a real spectacle, to say the least.
The parade is known for attracting thousands of visitors from all across the region each year.
— Chinese New Year in Manchester (@ChineseNYMCR) January 14, 2025
Headlining the festivities, the popular parade is set to take place on Sunday 2 February 2025.
Once again, organisers are expecting visitors in their thousands to turn out and watch as the famous 175ft Chinese dragon weaves its way through the city’s main shopping streets.
Kicking off from 12pm onwards, starting on the junction of Oxford Street and George Street, the parade will make its way along Portland Street before concluding in Chinatown for a final performance on Princess Street.
There will also be a night dragon parade in the Chinatown car park at 6:30pm and 7:30pm on the Saturday 1 February, while an illuminated dragon will feature through the streets of Chinatown as part of the celebration’s conclusion from 6:30pm on Sunday.
Manchester’s legendary Dragon Parade is returning to celebrate Chinese New Year 2025 / Credit: Chinese NY Manchester (via X)
There’ll also be even more cultural celebrations and activities to get involved with over in Manchester’s popular Chinatown, with live stage performances, a fun fair, and loads of stalls serving up tasty and authentic street food.
All the action in Chinatown will start from midday right through to 8pm on both days.
And to top it all off, we have also seen the return of Manchester’s famous traditional red lanterns dotted up above all around town too, adding colour to dark winter days.
As always, this year’s celebrations have been organised by the Federation of Chinese Associations of Manchester (FCAM), in partnership with Manchester Business Improvement District (BID) and Manchester City Council.
Featured Image – Chinese NY Manchester (via X)
City Centre
Manchester’s Cat Café is set to reopen four years after its closure
Danny Jones
Feline fans, rejoice, because Cat Café Manchester looks like it is reopening more than four whole years after its unfortunate closure.
The city centre’s much-loved cat café – the only one of its kind in Greater Manchester and among just a small handful in the North West – closed back in 2021 following unavoidable economic struggles brought about by the pandemic
Despite being hugely popular before having to shut its doors, the business was unable to reach an agreement with their landlord at the time and the owners were left with no other choice than to close permanently – or so we thought…
Seemingly back from the dead and published their first post since 11 January 2021, the official Instagram page shared just one line along with a picture of their soon-to-be new premises.
Briefly teasing fans ahead of an official announcement, the post reads: “Manchester we’ve missed you! There’s only one thing this place needs…”
The shot taken across the road from Manchester’s historic Barton Arcade shows the large shopfront unit on the main Deansgate strip where the original Classic Football Shirts store used to be.
As you can see, although the vintage footy kit reseller’s brand and decals still remain plastered on the windows, the two-storey location has been vacant since October 2023 when CFS moved their flagship Manchester branch to Dale Street in the Northern Quarter.
We’ve personally been wondering what might take the old venue’s place for a while now, with the rest of the Grade II-listed Victorian shopping arcade populated by food and drink spaces, a barbershop and fashion retailers like The R Store, but after all this time the last thing we expect was the Cat Café.
This will no doubt come as wonderful news to the countless fans who were gutted to see it disappear just a few short years ago.
At the time, a fundraiser was set up in an attempt to rescue it and the pet-forward coffee shop format also paved the way for similar ventures like this one over Salford.
Although we’re still yet to hear any more details regarding a possible reopening date, we can safely assume their four-year hiatus will be coming to an end sometime in 2025.
When they were still up and running, the café had 10 resident cats at their original site on the edge of NQ, now home to one of two Gooeys in Manchester.
It is worth noting that there were some concerns raised around hygiene and animal welfare, though we’re sure steps have been taken to address these issues in the interim.
Georgina Pellant -
21st April 2023 
