Waterloo Road and former Emmerdale star Adam Thomas’ restaurant business has entered administration with debts of nearly £300,000.
Thomas first opened The Spinn in Gatley in 2019 alongside childhood friend Scott Graham, but the restaurant was blighted by a succession of Covid lockdowns.
The turbulent time saw owners poke fun at the government with viral three-tiered ‘Boris’ and ‘Burnham’ burgers accompanied by the slogan ‘What a mess’, whilst the firm Gatley Bar and Grill Ltd was set up to handle the finances for the loss-making business.
The three-tier Boris Burger. / Image: The Spinn
Image: The Spinn
It now has debts of £293,996, including £71,423 owed to HMRC, and has entered voluntary liquidation.
The Gatley site was quietly boarded up last year and its signage removed, leaving locals wondering whether it was being refurbished or it had simply closed.
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Thomas later confirmed to the MEN the site had been shuttered, adding that the team would be focusing their efforts on other parts of their hospitality business – which includes the Oh My Glaze sauce collection.
Image: The Spin-Off
Image: The Spin-Off
The duo then launched The Spin-Off, a neighbourhood bar in Stockport’s Underbanks selling craft beer, natural wine, and cocktails, which still appears to be open despite the liquidation of Gatley Bar and Grill Ltd.
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Thomas officially stepped down from the Greater Manchester business last year and is now reportedly in talks with Strictly Come Dancing about making an appearance on this year’s show.
He finished third in 2016’s I’m a Celebrity and is currently playing the role of Donte Charles in the newly revived Waterloo Road. He is best known for playing Adam Barton on Emmerdale.
Featured image – The Spinn Gatley
Eats
New Manchester restaurant receives rave review as another is slammed as ‘torture’
Daisy Jackson
Pip, a new restaurant in Manchester, has received a rave national review this week – a review which slammed another restaurant in the same feature.
Food critic William Sitwell wrote in his review in The Telegraph that Pip is charming, refined, and fabulous.
“Bravo, Pip. Pip pip!” he wrote in the glowing write-up on the new restaurant, which stands at the foot of the new Treehouse Hotel and has the acclaimed Mary-Ellen McTague at its helm.
Sitwell’s Telegraph review particularly raved about dishes including Lancashire hot pot (‘fabulously good’), a wild garlic soup (‘a gorgeous thing’), and an apple trifle (‘a gift from heaven’).
But while it was all good for Pip, there were significantly less positive adjectives heaped on another restaurant in Manchester.
In fact, he said that Pip is ‘a great-value tonic’ for the ‘brash (and pricey) torture’ across town.
That restaurant was KAJI, formerly known as MUSU, which he said was ‘all tummies, bald heads, tattoos and heat’.
Sitwell said that while the service and sashimi are good at KAJI, the ‘place is afflicted by some overbearing cooking that cheapens the noble name of Japanese cuisine’.
He wrote: “Lamb chops fail the tender test and are properly wrecked sitting on a vulgar pond of sticky “tomato ponzu”. No beast should die to have that stuff squirted anywhere near it.
“And Kaji is a Japanese gaff without sake. Which is like opening a British pub in Tokyo and forgetting to put an ale on tap.”
Sharing the review, Pip wrote: “Thankyou @telegraph and @williamsitwell for the fantastic feature. We’re so proud of our team here.”
Milk Maids, Bolton – The family-run ice cream parlour on an award-winning farm
Daisy Jackson
Ice cream doesn’t come much fresher than those served at Milk Maids – in fact, you’ll be standing right on the family farm where the cows that produce the milk live, as you tuck into your scoop.
This unassuming dairy farm in Bolton has been in operation for decades, and in the same family for generations.
But it’s when sisters Fiona and Rebecca saw the full potential of all that award-winning milk being produced on their farm that Milk Maids was born.
This ice cream parlour on Dearden’s Farm in Over Hulton is now one of the hottest spots in Greater Manchester, especially when the weather is similarly hot.
Every month they release a whole batch of flavours, all made fresh daily (you can literally see Fiona legging it across the yard with buckets of milk to make fresh batches), with May specials including white chocolate and sea salt caramel, raspberry cookie, and passionfruit pavlova.
Milk Maids, Bolton – The family-run ice cream parlour on an award-winning farm
Cones can be filled with molten chocolate or pistachio creme before your ice cream is scooped and pressed into the cone.
Or you can have your chosen flavour whizzed up into a milkshake, served in a milk bun, or presented in an insulated take-home box for later.
We could wax lyrical about how good this ice cream is, but the queues really do speak for themselves, and you should go and get in it right now.
Georgina Pellant -
21st July 2023 
