With the festive season fast approaching, people up and down the country are getting into the yuletide spirit in preparation for the big day.
The UK government has sadly already conceded that “Christmas cannot be normal this year” amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and while it has been announced this week that up to three families can form a Christmas bubble between 23rd – 27th December, for a lot of people, this still means there will be friends and family members they are unable to spend time with.
This is presumably why many are seeing the greater value in gift giving this year, and if there’s one thing we’re all certain of, it’s that hampers are a classic Christmas present.
There’s just something extra special about about a hamper, right?
And whether it be food, beer, gin, or even Christmas trimmings, there’s plenty of independent businesses across Greater Manchester that are embracing the popularity of the hamper this year and offering their own unique spin on them.
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There’s so many places that are #StillServingMCR in our local area this Christmas, and there’s never been a more vital time to support independent hospitality.
We’ve rounded up some of the best Christmas hamper gifts we’ve seen.
Don Giovanni’s Christmas Hampers are really quite special this year.
Stuffed with premium Italian goodies – like parmigiano, truffle oil, homemade bottles of limoncello, truffles salami, tricolore fusilli, olives and balsamic vinegar from Modena – these are not the sort of products you can pick up in your local supermarket.
All sourced directly the restaurant from luxury Italian artisan suppliers, each hamper is designed to give your Christmas that extra bit of sparkle.
You can pre-order your Don’s at Home – Christmas Hampers via the Don Giovanni website here.
If you’re looking for a unique Christmas present this year, you need look no further than everything you’d need for a top-quality tapas night all wrapped up in a hamper.
The Abeja Tapas Bar Christmas Board-in-a-Box is packed with all the gourmet goodness you expect from Manchester’s smallest tapas bar, including – your choice of wine, Vermouth from Cordoba (250ml), meat and/or cheese board, your choice of artisan chutney, olives, extra-virgin olive oil (50ml), flatbreads, and a stocking filled with Spanish Christmas sweets.
All hampers are beautifully-prepared by hand, and are wrapped up in eco-friendly packaging.
Get your orders in for the Christmas Board-in-a-Box by by Friday 18th December for UK-wide Christmas delivery (via UPS) here.
If it’s premium gin you’re looking for this Christmas, you won’t find a much better option than the wide array of gift sets and hampers that Atlas Bar has put together, as the Castlefield favourite hangout currently has an impressive 270+ tipples stocked on its online gin shop.
The real standout is by far the This Christmas Home Gin Experience Pack at just £25.
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This contains four double gins – Tarquin’s Figgy Pudding, Four Pillars Christmas Edition, Bols Genever and Ferdinand Saar Quince Gin – and alongside these, you’ll also receive four premium Double Dutch Tonics, a Ginger Beer, and botanicals to complement your gins too.
You’ll even receive a link to an online virtual gin tasting experience, and information about your gins.
Herd’s Christmas Trimmings Hamper could be a real lifesaver this year.
Designed to “take the stress out of Christmas day cooking” with everything prepared as much as possible so you can “enjoy more time out of the kitchen and more time getting merry after this dreadful year”, each hamper comes loaded with everything you need to accompany the perfect Christmas dinner.
You can take your pick from a hamper for two (£35), four (£55), or six people (£75).
The Christmas Trimmings Hampers are available to purchase now for collection from the 22nd – 24th December and will come with full reheating and cooking instructions, plus a little Christmas treat.
Salford Roasters’ Xmas Boutique is your one-stop-shop for Christmas gift boxes this year.
Described as “a place to shop with simplicity for all your coffee gift set needs” and presented perfectly in recyclable kraft boxes and ribbon, you can choose your coffee, hot chocolate and coffee kit combinations, and it has also teamed up with local Salford Businesses – Seven Bro7hers and Sis4ers Distillery – to provide you with an awesome Festive Bonanza Bundle too.
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There’s six gift boxes to choose from, ranging in price from £21 – £60.
You can grab your Xmas Boutique gift set boxes directly via the Salford Roasters website here.
Life may still be on pause for the time being, but Salvi’s is “bursting at the seems” with the very best, hand-selected, imported produce from Italy and is inviting Mancunians to “grab a small slice of Neapolitan life during lockdown” in the lead up to Christmas.
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You can now even get your hands on a bespoke Christmas hamper too, filled with all the best deli goods.
Head on down to Salvi’s Deli in the Corn Exchange to grab yours.
Albert Street Bakery in Eccles – a truly independent and family-run bakery that proudly claims to produce “the only Eccles Cakes actually made in Eccles” – is currently taking orders for Christmas Hampers ahead of the festive season.
Each hamper comes packed with a selection of artisan breads, local cheeses and chutneys, festive filled tarts, homemade mince pies, triple chocolate brownie Christmas puds, and of course, Eccles cakes.
All of this baked goodness delivered to your door for only £45 too.
You can place your orders for the Albert Street Bakery Christmas Hampers before 14th December for delivery on 19th or 23rd here.
The Hampton & Vouis H&V Gift Bundle is the perfect way to “treat yourself or someone special”.
For just £25, you get a H&V Tote Bag (choice of colours Pale Grey or Pastel Pink), a H&V Re-Usable Cup (12oz Gray Goo or Pink, or 8oz Molto Grizio), a box of Brew Tea Co Tea Bags, and an Independent Coffee Guide No 5, and all items when bought separately would usually come out at an RRP of £43.98, so you’re making a cracking saving too.
You can grab your H&V Gift Bundle via the Hampton & Vouis website here.
Hip Flask Craft Beer’s Manchester Box is designed to “highlight the unique identity of Manchester”.
Inside this ‘Best of Manchester’ box of craft beer is a diverse range of lagers, pale ales and IPAs created in breweries across the region, and each box contains 12 beers (5x 440ml cans and 7x 330ml cans), making it an ideal gift for any beer lover, or someone with a special place in their heart for Manchester.
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There’s brews from beloved Greater Manchester breweries – Alphabet, Beatnikz Republic, Brightside, First Chop, Seven Bro7hers, and Shindigger – inside each hamper, all for £35.
You can find more information about each brew and grab your Manchester Boxhere.
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The Manc Group has partnered with Deliveroo to help local restaurants deliver during lockdown as part of our #StillServingMCR campaign.
Working alongside Deliveroo, The Manc will ensure all restaurants on the service will get the amplification they need across our social platforms. We’ll update our one million-strong audience on your latest updates and deals and we’ll create conversations with the masses about our favourite scran from your menus.
Basically, we will champion you, and we will go above and beyond to do it.
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.
A groundbreaking new multi-use entertainment and leisure venue is coming to Manchester
Danny Jones
A new multi-purpose food, drink, entertainment and leisure destination is coming to Manchester city centre and the Salford border this autumn, and you won’t find many places that roll so much into one spot.
Mancs, get ready to welcome ‘Tangerine’.
Conceived by an impressive collective of local creatives, indies and those with plenty of experience catering to the Northern masses, Tangerine is promising everything from multiple resident kitchens, a live music hall, an arthouse stage, a specialist martini bar and more.
Better yet, after a year in the making and quietly chipping away at the striking space, it opens later this month, so you don’t have to wait long to try it for yourselves.
Located on New Bailey Street, just on the edge of Spinningfields and Salford Central, this groundbreaking new venue features two main platforms (utilising the integrated charm of the historic railway arches), each boasting its own selection of attractions.
While platform one will offer a bakery, coffee roastery, wine store and bottle ship, the ‘Canteen Club’ and even a florist, number two will contain the music hall, arthouse stage and the stylish ‘Grand Departures’ bar – serving seven espresso martini alone – Tangerine will deliver a seamless day to night transition.
Arguably, however, the centrepiece is the ‘Cantina Collective’. The food and drink hall promises seven in-house kitchens, showcasing a variety of cuisines.
The opening line-up already confirmed includes Vanda: a family-run Parisian-inspired Ukrainian bakery; Mexican taqueria, PANTERA, burger joint Juicy, as well as Yo Dutchie (a unique fusion of Dutch-Japanese food) and a new Korean/ramen concept from local sushi favourites, Unagi.
Our stomachs are already grumbling just thinking about it.
CGI renders of the completed space. (Credit: Supplied)
Designed not only by the brains behind Northern Quarter’s beloved Mala hidden garden but WANT STUDIOS, who will be ensuring local artists, independents, and traders will be regularly spotlighted, the site will boast a capacity of well over 300 people.
Artyom Dmitrijev, owner of Tangerine and Mala, said in a statement: “Over a year in the making, we’ve used all our experience in design, interiors, architecture and hospitality to create our dream project. A place for all the independents to come together and thrive.”
Andy Windsor, Director of WANT STUDIOS, added: “Tangerine unites the city’s independent kitchens, bar tenders, bakeries and entertainment specialists. It is a unique showcase of what we do in the city. This is a new space for creativity, food, and culture, and we’re proud to be part of it.”
Debuting to the public with a big Halloween weekender on the evening of Friday, 31 October, with another launch event the following Saturday, you can sign up for exclusive early access for free, which could see you score a few freebies to boot.
Emily Sergeant -
27th November 2020 
