A steakhouse in Manchester has revealed plans to run a £15 deal during the rail and tube strikes in a bid to keep pulling people in.
Hawksmoor restaurant on Deansgate, which is widely considered to be one of the best steakhouses in the city, usually sells its 300g rump steak for £26 each with dripping fries priced at £5.75 on top.
However, during the ongoing strikes the restaurant has revealed it will be running a special deal where diners can enjoy the two together for £15.
Bosses have admitted the deal is so good, the restaurant won’t make any money – but say that it is more about keeping their restaurants (and hard-working teams) busy.
The new deal, dubbed ‘Move Your Rump’, will run from Thursday 20 to Monday 31 July and on every rail or tube strike day ‘for the foreseeable future’ between the hours of 12 and 6 pm.
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Revealing the new deal on Instagram, the business wrote: “A special rail strike announcement. It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that transport strikes aren’t great for restaurants, any more than they’re great for you. Sure, people have the right to strike and fight for more money, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard.
“Fortunately, Hawksmoor is doing OK, but this obviously impacts you and our teams. So, what to do about it? Well, we’ve decided to grab the cow by the horns and offer £15 steak & frites*, kicking off the offer from Thursday 20th until the end of July and then every rail/tube strike day for the foreseeable future.
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Image: Hawksmoor
Image: The Manc Eats
“A good reason to ‘move your rump’ and come have a good time with us. We won’t make any money out of it, but it should help to keep our restaurants – and our hard-working teams – busy, and hopefully gives you a reason to come into town and make a day of it.
“And, if you can’t come to Hawksmoor, consider nipping for lunch somewhere else. The hospitality industry has lost about £3bn since the strikes began and businesses are closing at an increasingly fast rate. A bit of fun for you, a welcome bit of business for them.
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*Available at our London, Manchester, Liverpool & Edinburgh Hawksmoor restaurants by booking on our website and quoting “Strike Steak” in the notes. Monday – Saturday, at lunchtime & early evenings, 12-6pm – opening hours vary slightly by restaurant, please check our website for details.”
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.
Georgina Pellant -
19th July 2023 
