The team behind one of Chester’s best-loved restaurants has revealed plans to open a rooftop restaurant here in Manchester.
Work has already begun to transform the rooftop of Blackfriars House into Climat, a wine-led restaurant and bar space with panoramic views of the city skyline.
It will be the second opening for the creators of Covino in Chester, which recently earned itself a place in the Michelin guide.
The building has already undergone a multi-million-pound refurbishment and now has co-working space, a lounge with a fireplace, a podcast studio/1920s-style reading room, a 70-seat auditorium and an independent coffee shop.
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The company is adding the new restaurant as part of its mission to blend work and lifestyle.
Covino first started life in a 300 sq ft restaurant and bar in 2016 but quickly outgrew it and moved around the corner into a fully-fledged restaurant.
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Bruntwood Works’ Blackfriars House will be home to Climat. Credit: Supplied
With Climat, it will serve a seasonal, daily-changing menu that they say will simply be ‘food you want to eat’, alongside an enormous menu of 250 different wines focused on the Burgundy region.
Charlotte Wild, head of retail and leisure at Bruntwood Works, said: “As we are seeing a big return to the city centre post-covid, it felt it was the right time to launch this extraordinary new dining and drinking space in Manchester.
“Climat will bring a unique experience to this exciting part of the city. With an eclectic wine range and seasonally inspired food in a beautiful new destination dining spot, it’s set to be an inspiring addition to Manchester.
“We’re delighted to be welcoming Chris and his team to our Blackfriars community – they have an amazing vision and will complement this beautiful building perfectly. For us, hospitality is completely central to the workplace of the future and so to have such a high-quality offering at Blackfriars makes perfect sense.”
Christopher Laidler, owner of Covino and Climat restaurants, added: “It’s great to get our foot in the door in Manchester. It represents a big step up for us. The site has so much to offer and we’re going to add something special to a great city. The space will be unique to others with its panoramic views and we can’t wait to share our progress during the build leading up to opening in autumn.
“Ultimately we want our guests to have a great dining experience and come and share our passion for really good food and drink.”
Featured image: Supplied
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.
Daisy Jackson -
16th June 2022 
