Higher Ground has gone from strength to strength since opening less than a year ago. It was named among the UK’s best restaurants just months after opening, and recently Rick Stein named it as one of his favourite places to eat in the whole country.
The restaurant started life as a pop-up at Kampus but has since put down roots with floor-to-ceiling glass windows on two sides, and a whole wine room where diners can pick out a bottle to take home.
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It’s operated by three friends – bright young chef Joseph Otway, front-of-house man Richard Cossins, and wine expert Daniel Craig-Martin.
Now, the restaurant can add a Bib Gourmand to its belt, which Michelin says is ‘not quite a star, but definitely not a consolation prize’.
Higher Ground in Manchester has been awarded a Michelin Bib GourmandHigher Ground in Manchester has been awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand
Bib Gourmands are awarded to ‘friendly establishments that serve good food at moderate prices’.
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Michelin launched the category to recognise restaurants that serve ‘high-quality food at pocket-friendly prices’, rather than the incredibly high standard (and high cost) of fine dining restaurants.
The guide described Higher Ground as an ‘all-round brilliant package’.
They wrote today: “There is no better place to start than in Manchester, the host city of this year’s MICHELIN Guide Ceremony.
“One of the new jewels in the city’s culinary crown is Higher Ground, a great value restaurant run by a trio of friends who provide friendly service alongside a selection of full-flavoured small plates.”
The Michelin Guide’s entry for Higher Ground reads: “In the heart of the city, not far from Piccadilly Gardens, three friends are making serious waves in the Manchester food scene.
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“With chatty service, a lively buzz and ingredient-led cooking bursting with bold flavours, they’re providing a brilliant all-round package for the city.
“Dishes are designed for sharing and often utilise ingredients from their Cinderwood Market Garden. There’s a brilliant wine list too, showcasing small producers and low-intervention choices, of which you can find more at their wine bar, Flawd, in Ancoats.”
A fancy new pizzeria has opened in Manchester serving posh pizzas and seasonal sharing plates
Clementine Hall
If you’ve ever wanted a pizza with smoked eel on, then you’re in luck.
Introducing Proloco, the brand spanking new restaurant from chef Richard Carver, founder of Honest Crust Sourdough Pizza, and Dan Hope, co-founder of Manchester club Rainy Heart.
Located in One Port Street over in Ancoats, this isn’t your bog standard pizzeria – this is lavish.
Here you’ll find a weekly rotating selection of 18-inch pizzas and sharing plates all made with the very best local produce imaginable.
Forget your bog standard pepperoni slice, on the menu here you’ll find a porchetta pizza with shishito peppers and Cornish kern, a charred greens pizza with sugar snap peas and anchovies, and our personal favourite – a smoked eel pie with lemon basil and pine nuts.
There’s also a tomato butter pie, which features slithers of butter in place of your usual mozzarella.
And if you just can’t decide, you can have your pizza as a half-and-half of flavours.
Sharing plates include tomatoes with lardo, roasted beetroot and a crispy egg with mortadella and fennel.
A half-and-half pizzaBeautiful interiors of ProlocoThe butter pie pizzaSmall plates, wine, and £7 negroniProloco opens on Great Ancoats Street in AugustScoops of homemade gelatoProloco’s open kitchenThe eel pizza at Proloco
A real selling point, though, is the £7 negroni alongside a selection of honest wine and carefully chosen beer from local suppliers as well as an aperitivo list.
The interior is simple, but beautiful – a colour palette of butter yellow, blue, and huge burgundy speakers to match the chairs that invite you to sit at long banquet-worthy tables or in front of the many windows.
Richard will be calling on his longstanding relationships with producers across the North West (and beyond) for his ingredients, from flour grown and milled in the Lake District, vegetables from Cinderwood Market Garden and Organic North, artisanal charcuterie and cheeses from Somerset, and the best tomatoes and oil from Italy.
He said: “Proloco is about cooking food I genuinely love with the best people and produce around me.
“I want it to feel effortless – warm, a little bit fun, and always worth coming back to.”
Proloco will officially open its doors on Great Ancoats Street on Wednesday 26 August.
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.
Daisy Jackson -
29th January 2024 
