This week we’ve been absolutely spoilt for choice when picking out the best new food and drink spots to try in Manchester. Get excited, because we’ve got some absolute crackers on the list for you this week.
The Black Friar – the historic Salford pub that’s survived an inner city bypass, fires, vandalism and an horrific, fatal car crash just before its opening weekend – has reopened its doors after nearly twenty years of closure to offer not one but two fantastic-looking menus.
The Black Friar pub in Salford has reopened after nearly twenty years of closure / Image: Ben Chaplin
Elsewhere, Northern Quarter stalwart Trof has to get an honorary mention, having finally reopened its doors for breakfast after a year and a half of doing dinner and drinks only – something that gives us great comfort indeed.
On top of all that, we’ve got some ice cream choux bun sandwiches for you, a top-notch Afro Carribean market stall in Piccadilly, a new cafe inside Affleck’s Palace and the return of one of Manchester’s most hotly-tipped kitchen pop-ups.
It’s going to be a very good week.
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The Black Friar pub in Salford has reopened following a £1.4 million pound investment / Image: The Manc Eats
Legendary Salford pub The Black Friar reopens after nearly 20 years
It was shut for almost two decades, but now historic Salford pub The Black Friar has reopened its doors once again. Inside, the decor is a mix of traditional pub and modern restaurant with floor to ceiling glass windows at the back that lead on to a gorgeous drinking and dining terrace area.
The modern restaurant is headed up by Ben Chaplin, formerly Head Chef at 20 Stories, serving a menu packed with wonderfully balanced seasonal dishes. Think juniper cured creedy duck breast with roast cherries and pickled kohlrabi, sweet pea and truffle tortellini with a wild nettle and watercress sauce, and a melt-in-the-mouth Lake District Himalayan salt aged 10oz rib eye, served with roast shallots and peppercorn.
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Pub food, meanwhile, includes tried and tested favourites like pies of the day served with buttered mash and gravy, and Boddingtons beer battered fish with minted crushed peas, tartare and chips. We’ve so much to say about this place, but the TLDR is essentially just ‘go immediately, you won’t regret it’.
Find The Black Friar on Blackfriars Road, Salford, M3 7DH.
The cafe at the top of Affleck’s Palace has been taken over by Earth Friendly Rocker and has relaunched with a new zero waste menu focused on Northern classics / Image: Potion at Affleck’s
A new zero waste cafe inside Affleck’s Palace
From the owner of Affleck’s zero waste shop Earth Friendly Rocker comes Potion, a new zero waste cafe that aims to be as sustainable as the shop that precedes it.
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With a menu focused on Northern classics, all ingredients here are sourced locally to minimise carbon footprint. In-keeping with Potion’s sustainable ethos, there are plenty of vegan dishes on the menu here too. Look out for the gorgeous pink and green interiors when you head up to the top floor to find them.
Potion opens from today, 26 July for its soft launch. Find it on the top floor of Afflecks Palace in the Northern Quarter, 52 Church St, Manchester M4 1PW.
Tine is back on the scene at last. Chefs Joshua Shanahan and James Lord return this weekend with a pop-up at Atomeca Bar / Image: Tine
Pop-up kitchen Tine is back on the scene
Tine is a pop-up kitchen run by two very talented Mancunian chefs, Joshua Shanahan (Where The Light Gets In) and James Lord (Manchester House / Wolf at the Door).
The duo came onto our radar just before the start of the pandemic in 2020. There they were, all set to be Manchester’s newest obsession making magic in a tiny kitchen at Ancoats’ wine bar Blossom Street Social, when suddenly the world ground to a halt
This weekend they’ll be throwing their first post-covid event at Atomeca Bar alongside some of our other hospitality favourites, the Schofield brothers. Tine will be using the konro grill to cook up a super small menu of small plates, served in tandem with drinks from Atomeca.
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Further details are being kept under wraps for now, but we’ve also been told about a new planned residency pop-up announcement that’ll be coming out officially next week. Think a proper restaurant format and a 6-course set menu with paired wines. We can’t say any more than that for now, but we are very excited.
Afro Carribbean street food boxes at Piccadilly Gardens market
Rita’s Reign has been getting all the love of late and for good reason too. Her Afro Carribbean street food stall is one of the most popular at Piccadilly Street food market, dishing up big boxes of dumplings, plantain, curried and roasted meats and what is known coloquially amongst her fans as simply “the purple stuff”.
If you’re not sure what to get we recomend trying her best seller, the combo box with jerk chicken, ‘the purple stuff’ (aka coleslaw made with red cabbage), two different types of rice (jollof rice AND rice and peas), curry goat, plantain, salad heaped together in one. It’s very special.
Rita’s Reign can be found at Piccadilly Gardens Street Food Market weekly, Wednesday to Sunday from 1030 am – 530 pm.
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Micro bakery Baby It’s Choux is popping up with her ice cream sandwiches at Media City this Saturday 31 July / Image: Baby It’s Choux
Ice cream choux sandwiches at Media City General Store
Although we keep hearing that the weather is about to take a turn for the worse, we’re still very keen to get our hands on some of this ice cream choux bun sandwiches at Media City this weekend.
This delicate pastry, which is also used in making eclairs and profiteroles, is first coated in a sweet and crunchy chocolate craquelin before being sliced in half and stuffed with Jersey ice cream from Cheshire’s Hopewell Farm. For an absolute bargain, you can even add in malted chocolate ganache for free.
Find Baby It’s Choux at Media City General Store, Unit 1 Lighbox, Salford M50 2AD on Saturday 31 July from 11 am – 3 pm.
I went on a walking wine tour around Manchester and it might be the perfect afternoon out
Daisy Jackson
If you love wine, and you love Manchester, and you’d quite like to do something with your afternoon that celebrates both of those things, can I put you onto the Manchester Wine Tours?
This genius little event sees small groups of people heading across the city on, essentially, an organised and very sophisticated bar crawl.
Imagine Carnage, but instead of drawing on a t-shirt and slamming neon green alcopops, you’re dressed up nicely and visiting some of Manchester’s top food and drink businesses.
Manchester Wine Tours is owned and operated by Kel Bishop, a local food and drink writer and wine teacher.
Each tour is different, taking in different bars, different wines, and different people.
But as a general rule of thumb you can expect to meet up with Kel somewhere centrally, and follow her to around four different bars, sampling one or two wines in each.
You end up drinking roughly two-thirds of a bottle of wine, unless you get lucky with a small group like ours, where we definitely got a little more than that.
And each tour factors in a few points of interest, in classic walking tour style and for even more of a Manchester flavour.
On the Manchester Wine Tour I joined, our route included a few of the city centre’s newest wine hotspots, starting at Kallos, the fantastic greek restaurant in Salford that’s striving to have the largest collection of greek wines in the UK.
Here we tucked into their divine, puffed-up flatbreads and dips, as well as tinned octopus, all paired with a crisp sparkling Domaine Karanika Brut Cuvee Speciale.
Stop one on our Manchester Wine Tours – Kallos
Then it was on with the big coats for a walk back into the city centre to Sterling.
On a personal note, I’ve been working as a food and drink journalist in Manchester for a decade. I did not expect to have any surprises along the way.
But then Kel led us into the wine room at Sterling – not usually open to the public – and proved me wrong.
Tucked away from the main bar, surrounded by wooden shelves glinting with different wines, we sampled a dry Chenin a New Zealand Lethbridge Chardonnay, and all realised we had been judging Chardonnay far too harshly.
Inside Sterling
It’s at this stop that Kel really breaks down the art of wine tasting, and how to build your understanding of a wine from sight to smell to sip.
Suitably warmed up, it was time for a dash across to Winsome, the new British restaurant that’s already been added to the Michelin guide, where we crammed around a centrepiece of wine bottle candles dripping in wax to discover the delights of the Greek Alkemi Xenomavro rose – my favourite wine from the night that I bought an extra bottle of to take home.
Each stop of the wine tour offers snacks as well as the wines, and for Winsome it was a delicate squash dish picked by the chef to compliment our drinks.
Manchester Wine Tours in Winsome
We also sampled a lethally good Terre de Zeus Xinomavro here – it was a good day for Greek wine.
By this point of the tour we’re like a slightly wobbly gaggle of baby birds, scurrying after Kel towards our final spot for the night – Beeswing.
The Kampus bar provided an Austrian Funkstille Zweigelt (ordered an extra glass of this, it was so good) and a The Good Luck Club Cabernet Sauvignon from the Barossa Valley, plus boards of charcuterie and cheese.
My brain is like a sieve for wine facts (I’ve written up most of this by looking at the labels), but I guess that just means the Manchester Wine Tour will have a repeat customer.
Kel is an expert at reading the room and deftly tailors her tastings to suit each person’s wine experience. For some it’s just the pleasure of drinking a nice wine (here, have a top-up), for others it’s digging into the history and politics of the drink. Some just wanted to uncover a new bar or restaurant, playing tourist in their own city.
It felt as though all seven of us on our tour took something different away from the exact same experience – and is that not the beauty of good hospitality?
It’s all completely accessible, approachable and very, very fun.
‘Exclusive’ Manchester nightclub shares customer’s eye-watering £88k bill
Daisy Jackson
A nightclub in Manchester has shared a picture of a recent customer’s bill – and to call them a big spender would be underselling it.
The luxury nightclub posted a photo of a bill that racked up to an eye-watering £88k.
Or, to be very specific, £88,589.60.
The flash customer was at The Continental Club, otherwise known as The Conti, an ‘exclusive’ bar and club on South King Street.
The bar is a drastic departure from the former nightlife spot which stood in its place – the building was previously home to South, a legendary underground club famed for its alternative soundtrack.
Now it’s got a new life as a nightlife haunt where, apparently, it’s not uncommon to spend the equivalent of a small terrace house on drinks.
The bar shared the picture of the receipt yesterday, describing it as a ‘record-breaker’.
The Continental Club has claimed that it’s not only the biggest spend in its own walls, but the most expensive bill to have ever taken place in any club in Manchester.
‘Exclusive’ Manchester nightclub shares customer’s eye-watering £88k bill
Curious to see how exactly a person could spend £88k on drinks? Let’s break down some of the more expensive items.
Let’s kick things off with three bottles of Clase Azul Ultra Extra Anejo, a tequila which retails for around £2.5k but set this customer back £9,500 a pop…
Then there’s a couple of magnums of Dom Perignon rose champagne (£2,000 each), a few bottles of Armand de Brignac Ace of Spades Champagne (£1,500 each), and a few £950 bottles of Chivas Regal 25 whiskey.
It makes the £850 Grey Goose at the bottom seem like child’s play.
They also slammed at least 48 Red Bulls, according to the bill.
Then on top of that you’ve got a staggering £8k worth of service charge – some very happy staff went home that night, I’d imagine.
The Continental Club wrote: “Some come to sip…others come to set records. The biggest table spend to EVER take place in a club in Manchester.”
Georgina Pellant -
26th July 2021 
