Eats

Chips @ No.8 – Greater Manchester’s greatest chippy opens new site with bar and restaurant inside

It's stunning inside.

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson - 11th June 2024

The brand new Chips @ No.8 chippy is ready to reopen in Prestwich – now with a beautiful restaurant space included.

Fans of the award-winning takeaway will now be able to sit inside the much-larger space as they devour what’s considered by many (myself included) to be the best fish and chips in Greater Manchester.

Chips @ No.8 hasn’t moved far – it’s actually just drifted next-door – but the improvements are vast.

Now three times the size, the new-look space is split into a takeaway, a bar, and a restaurant.

The upstairs restaurant is the biggest change, serving a seafood-focused menu that isn’t necessarily all about the fryer.

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The tasteful space has huge tall ceilings, exposed brick, and colourful chippy-inspired art on the wall.

This part will launch later this month with a concise ‘from the kitchen’ menu that will expand and change once they’ve tested the waters.

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But the chippy itself is raring to go from today.

The upstairs restaurant at the new Chips @ No.8
The upstairs restaurant at the new Chips @ No.8
You can now get cans of local beer to take away with your chippy tea
You can now get cans of local beer to take away with your chippy tea

Visitors to the new Chips @ No.8 will be able to place their order from the counter before heading into the bar area for a pint while they wait.

There are also fridges full of cans to take away, featuring some big local names like Seven Brothers, Zapato, and Pomona.

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The menu down here is blissfully unchanged, which means you’ll still find chips fried in beef dripping, British fish fried in a perfect crisp batter, and a full menu of pies.

Owner Dan Edwards has piled a lot of love into this place, and says it’s ‘easily the most challenging thing’ he’s ever done.

The new Chips @ No.8 is ready to open just next door to its original site
The new Chips @ No.8 is ready to open just next door to its original site
Chips @ No.8 has a new bar space inside where you can eat-in with your chippy
Chips @ No.8 has a new bar space inside where you can eat-in with your chippy
Owner Dan Edwards outside the new Chips @ No.8
Owner Dan Edwards outside the new Chips @ No.8

In a statement he shared this morning, Dan wrote: “So, after what feels like forever, we will open the new shop today.

“We started this project nearly 12 months ago and it’s come close to breaking me many times. Easily, the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, but we’re there now!

“My wife is clearly an angel for putting up with me during this whole time. Marie, I love you more than you can imagine

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“Couple of things to note:- we’re not opening the restaurant area for a few days, so that we can ‘bed in’ the new systems. We don’t wanna give anything short of the best. We’ll let you know when we’re ready.

“We’re also gonna introduce the “from the kitchen” menu slowly, with more items being added as we go.

“The last thing, is it’s going to be walk ins only, there’s no booking system. We know there’s lots of you who want to secure your seat but it’s a non negotiable unfortunately.

“What we can guarantee, is we have an amazing space, an amazing team, and amazing customers. Over the next week or so, go easy on us if things aren’t quite right. I promise we’re all trying our best with new everything.

“Here’s to the next (and final) stage. Chips @No.8 is all grown up and we can’t wait to share it with you!”

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The new Chips @ No.8 opens on Tuesday 11 June on Clifton Road.

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Featured image: The Manc Group

Eats

New Manchester restaurant receives rave review as another is slammed as ‘torture’

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson New Manchester restaurant Pip receives rave review as another is slammed as 'torture'

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.”

You can read his full review HERE.

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Featured image: The Manc Group

Eats

Milk Maids, Bolton – The family-run ice cream parlour on an award-winning farm

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson Ice cream at Milk Maids in Bolton, Greater Manchester

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
Milk Maids, Bolton - The family-run ice cream parlour on an award-winning farm
Milk Maids, Bolton - The family-run ice cream parlour on an award-winning farm
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. 

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Featured image: The Manc Group

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