The best restaurants in the UK have been named at the National Restaurant Awards – and Manchester has done pretty well for itself.
The prestigious awards took place last night, listing the top 100 places to eat in the entire UK.
Three restaurants within Manchester itself managed to make it into the top 50 of the country’s best restaurants.
And there was a glowing endorsement for a brand new spot that’s only been open for a couple of weeks.
Skof is a beautiful new spot by celebrated chef Tom Barnes, who has worked at L’Enclume, the three-Michelin star Lake District restaurant widely considered one of the best in the world.
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His first restaurant, located in the NOMA neighbourhood, has been named the ‘One to Watch’ at the National Restaurant Awards.
Judges said that Skof is set to make ‘a big impact in a city that has a pumping restaurant scene but is in general unmoved by fancy restaurants’.
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Food at Skof in Manchester. Credit: The Manc Group
The highest-ranking restaurant in the Top 100 list for Greater Manchester is Michelin starred Mana, which came in 14th place.
The fine dining establishment in the heart of Ancoats got its Michelin star just a year after opening and National Restaurant Award judges praised it for being ‘understated and confident’ with ‘highly technical and precise’ cooking.
Higher Ground is operated by a powerful trio – one of the UK’s brightest young chefs Joseph Otway, front-of-house man Richard Cossins, and wine expert Daniel Craig Martin – and made the list thanks in part to its focus on regenerative farming and local produce.
Higher Ground in Manchester has been awarded a Michelin Bib GourmandErst in Ancoats is Michelin-recommended restaurantHigher Ground and Erst in Manchester have both been named among the UK’s best restaurants. Credit: The Manc Group
Completing the Manchester portion of the best restaurants in the UK list is Erst, which has swooped in at number 50.
The beautiful Ancoats restaurant was named as ‘the perfect neighbourhood spot’, with its ever-changing menu of small plates and natural wines hailed as being ‘an antidote to the glitzier ‘going out out’ restaurant scene for which Manchester is traditionally known’.
All eyes have been on Erst in recent weeks after Trove – the bakery which is a sister site to the restaurant – suddenly shut down.
There was a lot of success for the North West in general too at the National Restaurant Awards.
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Two Michelin-star Moor Hall, just up the road from Manchester in Lancashire, placed third overall in the UK but lost its crown as the best restaurant in England.
L’Enclume in the Lake District sits in 20th place, The Parkers Arms pub in Lancashire made 51st, and Forest Side in Ambleside came 75th.
You can see the full top 100 list from the National Restaurant Awards here.
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.
Daisy Jackson -
11th June 2024 
