Over in Manchester’s Green Quarter, there is a charming restaurant serving up some of the best pasta in the city.
Called The Sparrows, last week it was revealed as one of the new additions to the prestigious Michelin Guide – a recognition that’s truly well deserved.
Long beloved by Manchester foodies, it takes its name from its signature dish, spätzle: a thick, irregularly-shaped pasta so named because its dough looks like birds in flight when scraped, wet, from the board straight into a boiling pan of water.
One-half of the couple behind the restaurant, Chef Franco Concli, hails from Trentino in the north of Italy where dishes often share influences with neighbouring Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The other, Kasia Hitchcock, was born in Poland close to the Ukrainian border, where dumplings are a comforting part of the food culture.
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It makes sense, then, that on the menu you’ll find plump handmade pierogi and pelimeni dumplings stuffed with the likes of cottage cheese and potato, mushroom and homemade sauerkraut, listed alongside gnocchi, pappardelle, tortelli, and the pasta that started it all, spätzle.
The kase spätzle is a must-order dish at The Sparrows. / Image: The Manc Eats
The pasta dish from which The Sparrows takes its name. / Image: The Manc Eats
One of the beauties of the menu here, specials aside, is that you pick your own pasta and sauce combination. Sauce options include butter and sage, tomato, guanciale, and bolognese, but the must-order dish, the one I always go back to, is the kase spätzle.
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Essentially a grown-up, Germanic version of mac and cheese, think fresh egg noodles enveloped in creamy gruyere and Emmental cheese sauce, with braised onions adding a touch of sweetness. It’s a Swabian specialty but also very popular in Germany, Switzerland, and now Manchester too.
As for the bar, there is an enticing list of low-intervention Germanic and Polish wines, plus a strong sake menu.
Before The Sparrows, Kasia’s sake company supplied Umezushi. Now sadly closed, it was once Manchester’s best sushi restaurant and a key player in helping the couple get their start up here.
Pierogi dumplings at The Sparrows. / Image: The Manc Eats
Pappardelle with chorizo, cherry tomato, spinach and cream at The Sparrows. / Image: The Manc Eats
Owners had recently converted the archways opposite into prep kitchens, and it was here in 2019 that it all began, with dumplings and spätzle served in a tiny arch that seated twelve at a push.
Needless to say, after a rave from Jay Rayner in The Guardian the restaurant quickly outgrew Mirabel Street and moved to a new, bigger arch no more than five or ten minutes walk away.
As time has gone on, its settings and service have become undeniably sleeker. Its menu, however, has stayed pretty much the same – including its low prices.
On my first ever visit in the summer of 2019, I think my friend and I spent just over £50 on a three course meal with wine. This time, a plate of spätzle is still only £10.50 shared between two of us.
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Given everything that’s going on in the restaurant industry, and the fact that I recently saw a far inferior plate of pasta listed at £16.50 in another Manchester restaurant, it’s a very pleasant surprise.
The daily special, tortelli stuffed with butternut squash with an amaretti biscuit crumb. Image: The Manc Eats
The menu at The Sparrows is still amazingly good value despite its ever-growing prestige. / Image: The Manc Eats
As it ever was, the staples are still there: gnocchi and spätzle, pappardelle and a daily special, available to order with your sauce of choice from just £8 a plate.
We also try one of the specials, starting our meal sweet with tortell stuffed with butternut squash and seasoned with the almond crunch of an amaretti crumb.
Add to that long ribbons of pappardelle with an indulgent mix of chorizo, cherry tomato, spinach and cream, a small plate of fresh and fragrant dill-fermented cucumbers, and an excellent bottle of Teliana Valley orange wine, and suffice to say our table was a very happy one indeed.
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The house pierogi still come stuffed with the same choices of potato and cottage cheese, or sauerkraut and mushroom, and popular sides of salted rosemary focaccia and sauerkraut are correct and present, priced from £3.75.
Even better, dumplings can be ‘mixed and matched’ at the chef’s discretion – a good option if you can’t decideon your order and want to try a bit of everything.
Inside The Sparrows on Red Bank. / Image: The Manc Eats
Dill-fermented cucumbers at The Sparrows. / Image: The Manc Eats
As for the dessert menu, there’s still the sweet spätzle with cinnamon butter and brown sugar, as well as Daz’s wife’s brownie (Daz being their postman), although I regret to report I overindulged so immensely on the savoury portion of the meal I was too far gone to contemplate a pudding.
The restaurant itself is chic and stylish, with statement lighting fixtures and tall glass windows looking into an open kitchen. But the real marvel is what comes out on your plate.
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No doubt it will soon be inundated with new fans, as it should be. Run, don’t walk, whilst you can still get a table. This really is some of the best pasta in town.
Feature image – The Manc Eats
Eats
The GIANT £375 chocolate Easter egg that’s ‘too beautiful to eat’
Daisy Jackson
One of the north’s most legendary hospitality businesses has created an Imperial Easter Egg, and the effort that goes into crafting it is wild.
Coming in at 10kg, 22 inches tall, and £375, Bettys enormous chocolate treat shows off a whole lot of artistry.
The iconic tearoom, which has sites across Yorkshire, has shared the behind-the-scenes video to its TikTok page, drumming up almost half a million views.
The mouth-watering video shows first milk chocolate being hand-painted onto a chocolate egg-shaped mould to create the Easter egg’s beautiful textured appearance, The Hoot reports.
Then layer after layer of melted chocolate is poured in from a chocolate tap, before being trimmed and tidied.
Bettys, which has tearooms across Harrogate, York, and Leeds, uses the finest Swiss Grand Cru chocolate for its imperial Easter egg, and every bit that’s trimmed away is melted down to reuse elsewhere.
Then a pastry chef at the tearoom will spend up to an hour PER EGG piping on the ornate decorations, carefully piping on coloured white chocolate stems and ferns.
Then colourful royal icing flowers are placed on its surface, each one again hand-piped by their cake decorators.
The end result is a whopping Spring-time masterpiece covered in shades of green, yellow and purple.
Bettys Imperial Easter Egg weighs in at a massive 10kg and stands at 22 inches tall.
Bettys says: “Celebrating the creativity and craft that makes Bettys unique, our handmade Imperial Easter eggs continue a tradition stretching back more than a century, when our founder Frederick Belmont designed eggs which were ornately embellished with hand-piped icing designs.
“Containing over five kilos of Grand Cru Swiss chocolate made from prized Venezuelan criollo cocoa beans, the Imperial Egg is a true work of art, showcasing the highest skills of our chocolatiers and cake decorators.
“Each Imperial Egg carries an array of delicate, individually crafted spring blooms and foliage including primroses, narcissi and pansies, with hand-piped stems as a final perfect touch.
“Our Imperial Easter Egg is made to order and is only available for collection from one of our Yorkshire shops.”
And if £375 is a bit out of budget, you can buy a miniature version that’s just as beautiful for a tenth of the price.
In the comment section on the video, one person wrote: “30 mins and a cup of tea and I’d polish that off.”
Another said: “A chocolate… tap?! I’m calling my plumber.”
Someone else wrote: “That’s just too beautiful to eat! A work of art!”
What a beautiful beast indeed.
Featured image: Bettys
Eats
Inside the Manchester restaurant serving ‘India’s answer to a Wigan kebab’
Georgina Pellant
When it comes to finding new and innovative ways to enjoy the humble potato, it’s fair to say that we Brits pretty much have the art down.
From creamy mash to deep-fried chips, crunchy hasslebacks, hash browns, and the all-time classic that is bubble and squeak, you name it, we’ve tried it.
Still, somehow it took the arrival of Indian street food favorite Bundobust for us to be introduced to the concept of a mashed potato burger – and we are forever thankful.
Comprised of a deep-fried potato dumpling placed inside a brioche bun, accompanied by two house-made chutneys and a whole green chili pepper, since its introduction to the Manchester food scene in 2016 the Vada Pav has become one of Bundobust’s most iconic dishes.
Also known as a Bombay burger, the vegetarian fast food snack sells in its thousands back home in Mumbai and has now become something of a signature dish here in Manchester too.
We recently popped down with Deliveroo for an episode of Takeaway Champions to try the dish, and after one taste our reviewer immediately called it the ‘Indian answer to a Wigan kebab’. It’s simply carbs on carbs on carbs, and we’re here for it.
Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats
That said, it’s not the only thing worth ordering when you visit.
Other longstanding menu staples at Bundobust include its barbecued paneer, mushroom and pepper tikka kebabs, sweet and crunchy Bundo chaat, and crispy okra fries; whilst new dishes include the Ragda Pethis – a north-meets-east combination of mushy peas and potato cake, sev, tomato, onion, and tamarind chutney.
Having first opened in Manchester in 2016, today Bundobust has two sites in the city centre. Its original home still sits underneath Piccadilly Gardens, with a second restaurant and in-house brewery residing over on Oxford Road.
The restaurant – initially born in Leeds before making its way to Manchester – has always had a strong reputation for sourcing excellent craft beer, but since quietly opening its own brewery during the Covid lockdowns it’s only gone from strength to strength.
Housed in a unique 100-year-old space within the iconic Grade II listed St James building, the Manchester-based brewery is a custom-built 10-hectolitre facility capable of producing 20,000 pints a month.
Today, alongside beers from other respected brewers, the restaurant serves up a list of specially-made house beers, all designed to complement the flavours of its dishes.
These include a coriander lager, a masala chai porter and a tropical pale ale, as well as its latest concoction: a mango lassi beer created in collaboration with brewers at Northern Monk.
Georgina Pellant -
5th February 2023 
