Beloved Manchester breakfast, butty and late-night boozing spot Bowlers Cafe has quietly closed and is set to be turned into a tapas and pintxos bar next month.
News of the cult favourite closing went under the radar but posters in the window of the now former Bowlers site went up over the weekend, confirming that the popular city centre lunch spot is set to receive a Spanish makeover.
Although the exact September opening date is still unconfirmed, the new small plates and snack bar located just off Albert Sqaure will be called El Kabron and is set to be operated by well-established local restaurant, La Bandera.
Now open for a decade, La Bandera is categorically one of the go-to Latin establishments in Manchester, picking up countless awards including the best Spanish restaurant in the city and being voted among the top three best tapas places in the UK by The Times.
The posters for a new Manchester city centre tapas bar are up. (Credit: The Manc Group)
While the same Spanish-Canarian influences will no doubt be in the mix, you can most likely expect El Kabron to be a more pared-back concept than its parent brand.
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Said to be “inspired by the northern Spanish taverns”, the poster only gives away that there’ll be tapas, pintxos – pronounced ‘pinchos’ in case you were wondering – bocadillo-style sandwiches and lots of lovely cured meats. Give us all the Jamón (ham), por favor y gracias.
Naturally, as a tapas bar, there’ll also be lots of imported beer, sangria, wine cocktails and other boozy options when they soft launch to the public very soon.
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As Bowlers was also known for regularly staying up in the evenings to host live music and entertainment, it no doubt comes as welcome news that the replacement will carry on the late-night culture.
From this……to something more like this.Credit: Bowlers Cafe (via Facebook)/La Bandera (via Instagram)
It remains to be seen whether the new opening will carry on any kind of breakfast service like their predecessors but we can smell a lovely Spanish lunch deal coming winging its way to us very soon.
In the meantime, La Bandera themselves have extended their current 50% off until mid-September, meaning you can make the most of their discounted food and get a better idea of what might be to come from El Kabron.
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.
Danny Jones -
27th August 2024 
