A popular restaurant discovery platform that’s known for rewarding users with 50% off their food bill has just launched in Manchester.
Originally founded in New Zealand, but having been successfully operating in several other major UK cities like London, Bristol, and Birmingham since 2018, First Table has now decided to take its unique dining experience even further afield, and is venturing up north for what it’s dubbing its next “delicious milestone”.
And of course, the thriving foodie neighbourhood here of Manchester has been picked as the first destination.
Unfamiliar with First Table?
Known and loved for its innovative approach to dining, the online platform and app is already massively popular with foodies who are keen to discover new restaurants, cuisines, and dishes in their city, all while being rewarded for dining early with a whopping 50% off their food bill if they’re in groups of two to four.
It’s free to sign up to the platform itself, and diners only need to pay £6 in their chosen restaurant to secure the half-price offer.
Manchester food lovers can choose from a diverse selection of restaurants that are a part of the platform’s launching lineup, including The Blues Kitchen, Kala, Hispi, Firehouse, Leno at Diecast, Nida’s Thai, Armenian Taverna & Restaurant, Sangam City, Masons, The Molly House, Purezza, BLVD, Peru Perdu, Fress, Bouzouki By Night, and so many more.
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First Table’s founder and CEO, Mat Weir, says the company is “genuinely excited” to bring the platform to Manchester because the city is “deeply rooted in its eclectic culinary heritage”.
First Table has now launched in Manchester / Credit: Jason Goodman | Spencer Davis (via Unsplash)
He added: “In recognising Manchester’s blend of traditional eateries and contemporary bistros, our aspiration is to unite diners with the city’s diverse array of restaurants, and encourage our foodies to try something new”.
Mat also talked of the “win-win benefits” of the platform, by highlighting that it also works in partnership with the city’s restaurant industry by making sure they don’t incur any fees to feature, and by also encouraging and incentivising off-peak dining hours.
First Table has now officially launched in Manchester, and you can find out more and get started on the platform here.
It’s also available to download from the App Store, and from the Google Play store here.
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.
Emily Sergeant -
12th October 2023 
