The Lowry Hotel’s River Restaurant is currently recruiting for the city’s first ever ‘five star foodie panel’ to sample and review the restaurant’s newest dishes all from the comfort of their own home.
Do you fancy yourself as the next Jay Raynor? Do you know your velouté from your vichyssoise?
As The River Restaurant is needing feedback on its exclusive new @HOME Package – which includes all the ingredients to cook five courses at home with a bottle of wine to share between two – food-loving Mancunians are now being encouraged to submit their application to join the city’s hottest new review panel.
No foodie CV is necessary, just a passion for good eats.
@HOME by The Lowry is a new dining concept which allows customers to enjoy restaurant quality food at home via a click-and-collect service, so for those not selected as a panel member you can still enjoy the luxury of five-star cooking with the @HOME Dining Package, which is priced at £60 for a five-course meal for two people and a bottle of wine.
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The five lucky applicants chosen to sit on the hotel’s first ever panel will receive a personalised @HOME packages each month.
With menus curated by award-winning Executive Head Chef Dave Ashton, successful applicants will get to taste different sumptuous dishes and accompanying wines between October and December 2020, with the expectation the role will continue in to 2021, and, if that wasn’t enough, they will also be able to enjoy exclusive hotel member benefits, which includes a complimentary overnight stay at The Lowry Hotel to indulge in five star luxury.
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All they’ll be expected to do for the role is finish off the dishes at home using the ingredients provided, and rate the dishes using the #LowryLifeatHome hashtag on Instagram or Twitter.
It is a friends or work colleagues birthday or special occasion soon?
There is no better way to celebrate than @ HOME by The Lowry Hotel.
Choose from afternoon tea, Sunday lunch or the dining package.
Dave Ashton – Executive Head Chef at The Lowry Hotel’s River Restaurant – said: “We’ve been hard at work in the kitchen, developing and testing a five-star dining experience which people can enjoy at home.
“We have successfully launched our @HOME afternoon tea and Sunday roast service, but now we need your help to tell us what you think of our new deluxe dining package and menu changes.
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“Manchester’s food scene is constantly growing, and we need people like you, who love good food, to tell us what you think of our new menu and help make it even more delicious. Our dining package changes on a monthly basis, so you will sample five different dishes each month paired with a bottle of wine for you and your lucky plus one.
“We look forward to hearing your thoughts and evolving the menu for the following month based on your feedback.”
To be in with a chance of being selected for the role, you’ll need to follow The Lowry’s Instagram account – @thelowryhotel – and send an email to [email protected] with your name, Instagram or Twitter account handle, proof of age, and 150 words explaining why you think you should be selected.
You have until Sunday 8th November to get your applications in.
Members will be chosen by a panel of judges comprised of two representatives from The Lowry Hotel.
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Don’t worry if you’re not chosen for the role though, because The River Restaurant’s @HOME service also includes a bubbly afternoon tea – which will set you back just £50 for two people – and includes a fully-prepared afternoon tea spread, including tea from the Manor and a bottle of Prosecco, and even a Sunday lunch option – priced at £40 for two people – which includes the freshest of locally-sourced veg, quality meats, and plenty of mouth-watering gravy.
You can find more information about the @HOME service via The Lowry Hotel website here.
Eats
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.
Emily Sergeant -
27th October 2020 
