Manchester restaurant creates cheeky £69 per head Valentine’s menu
Intimating its innocence in the joke, Kala replied with the haloed face of an angel - but let's be honest, there's no way they didn't do this on purpose.
Top Manchester bistro Kala has revealed its Valentine’s menu for 2023 and it’s equal parts naughty, raunchy, and (if you’re a little immature like us) downright funny.
No, we’re not referring to the chef’s dishes (although they do sound absolutely stunning). Rather, the thing that caught our eye was the price: with loved-up diners being charged exactly £69 per head to enjoy the romantic supper.
Surely someone’s got to be having a laugh on this one, and we’re absolutely cackling. Their followers clearly think it’s funny too, that is if the comments on the restaurant’s recent Instagram post are anything to go by.
Shared with the simple caption “Love is in the air. Valentine’s Day bookings now open”, the original menu post on the restaurant’s page makes no reference to the tongue-in-cheek price.
Mini doughnuts with dark chocolate sauce, honeycomb ice-cream and a nice slab of home made honeycomb. / Image: Kala Bistro
Chicken liver pate, farmer’s chutney and wholemeal sourdough toast – a Kala classic. / Image: Kala Bistro
However, fans were quick to pick up on it and quickly commented with a mixture of amusement and approval – with one person simply sending a trio of crying-laughing emojis, followed by a set of clapping hands.
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Intimating its innocence in the joke, Kala replied with the haloed face of an angel – but let’s be honest, there’s no way they didn’t do this on purpose.
After all, a quick look at the Valentine’s page on its website reveals this little nugget: “We always say people who love to eat are our kind of people, so HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY to all you lovers out there!”
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Read into that what you will.
The newly-revealed Valentine’s menu at Kala Bistro is priced at exactly £69 a head. / Image: Kala Bistro
One of Kala’s most recent specials, made with tuna tartare, pickled cucumber, sesame, and salt and vinegar crisps. / Image: Kala Bistro
As for the menu itself, for that £69 it offers some really good value with a total of five courses including bread and butter pudding with ‘burnt toast’ ice cream and a giant rack of lamb, salad, meatballs and gnocchi ‘to share’ as a main.
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With bread and snacks to be enjoyed before starters, followed by mains including a huge roasted lamb rack ‘to share’, desserts, and a signature sweet to finish, it all sounds more than tempting.
Think nibbles like rosemary and thyme focaccia with olive oil and sea salt or seaweed crackers with oyster emulsion, followed by starters of BBQ Hispi cabbage with romesco brown shrimp dressing and salted almonds, confit duck leg with savoury pancake, crispy rice and cucumber relish, and burrata with truffled honey, rocket and hazelnut pesto, grilled sourdough and pickled grapes.
Dark chocolate mousse, coffee caramel, hazelnut praline mousseline, vanilla ice cream. / Image: Kala Bistro
Roast rump of lamb, Shepherds pie, watercress and spinach purée. / image: Kala Bistro
For mains, choices include the aforementioned roasted rack of lamb to share with salad, lamb meatballs and gnocchi marinara, or for the couples that want their own dish, there’s roasted chicken breast, poached halibut loin, and pan-fried potato gnocchi.
And for pudding, Kala’s rhubarb and pistachio trifle is served with white chocolate and a lemon thyme cookie, whilst elsewhere on the menu you’ll find sour cherry bread and butter pudding with Maraschino and burnt toast icecream, and a blood orange choux bun filled with salted dark chocolate custard, vanilla cream and hazelnut brioche.
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Last but not least, you can also each enjoy a marshmallow Krispie to finish before heading home to enjoy a little naughty dessert of your own (or not, whatever floats your boat).
Team behind award-winning cocktail bar Stray to open second Manchester bar
Daisy Jackson
The team behind Manchester’s award-winning cocktail bar Stray have announced a second bar is on the way.
Bar Dos will be an all-new neighbourhood bar, promising to be the ‘tearaway younger sibling’ of Stray.
You can expect everything from pints of Stella to refined cocktails, plus DJs all weekend long.
Set to open very soon, with a September launch pencilled into our diaries already, Bar Dos will be joining a couple of other big names in a new building on Great Ancoats Street.
They’ll count Proloco and Osma as neighbours once all three ventures are up and running this year.
Stray first opened at Mackie Mayor back in 2023, and shot into the UK’s Top 50 Cocktail Bars just over a year later.
Bar Dos will open in Manchester in SeptemberBar Dos is the second site for Stray
There, it occupies a beautiful corner unit with huge windows, and an outside terrace, perfect for sipping on their best-selling cocktails like their tomato vine margarita and their Fanta Limon (a boozy version of everyone’s favourite balcony tipple).
Now ready to launch a second site, the team will soon open Bar Dos, which will be a late-night, music-focused neighbourhood bar.
DJs already announced, along with renowned artists who have curated playlists, include Space Afrika, Chunky, Private Joy, Konnie Kon of Children of Zeus, and Stray residents Rhod Parry and Stu Richards.
Bar Dos will open on Great Ancoats Street this September.
Family behind Salvi’s launch new concept, weeks after iconic restaurant closure
Daisy Jackson
Just weeks after the closure of its iconic, 16-year-old Italian restaurant in the Corn Exchange, the family behind Salvi’s have revealed a brand-new concept.
And this time, the reins are being handed over to the next generation.
Salvi’s founder Maurizio Cecco has helped to shape Amò, but it’s all the brainchild of his daughter, Sienna.
Sienna will run the business out of a unit up on Deansgate Mews, serving fresh pasta dishes, pizza sandwiches, tubs of tiramisu, and two-for-£10 spritzes.
The deli aspect of the original Salvi’s has been carried over to Amò too – you’ll find shelves almost to the ceiling filled with Italian pasta, wine, olive oils, pistachio spreads, and more.
Sienna has grown up in restaurants, with her parents launching Salvi’s when she was just two years old.
She said she wants the space to be a livelier, fresher version of the Italian restaurant that has been so loved by Mancs for so many years.
Sienna outside AmòFresh pasta dishesInside Amò by Salvi’sTheir viral frozen crema di caffeLemon granitaInside Amò by Salvi’sTiramisu pots
Amò, which is Neapolitan slang for ‘my love’, will have loads of fresh Italian dishes, including arancini, gnocchi, and hearty pasta plates.
At lunchtimes, guests can order from a £10 lunch menu, with dishes changing daily depending on the best produce the kitchen can get – it could be a pizza sandwich with proscuitto and tomato, a spicy pasta, or a gnocchi bake, always served with your choice of soft drink.
With its position on Deansgate Mews, Amò basks in the sunshine at lunchtimes.
And while it’s definitely a different concept to the original Salvi’s, Amò looks set to carry the family’s Italian food legacy into its next generation.