Levenshulme has long been described as an up-and-coming destination for restaurants, but with its typical South Manchester frontage of innumerable pound shops, bookies, and fried chicken takeaways, at first glance, you might be forgiven for wondering why.
This is no quiet, polite Ancoats, with its tiny pedigree dogs trotting around happily after their owners, or a newly sterilised Sale with its identikit shop fronts.
This is a foodie suburb with a loud personality, where gentrification is still being somewhat held at bay as the old and the new continue to sit side by side.
Over the past decade, the Levenshulme neighbourhood has attracted a roster of trendy new bars, taprooms, restaurants and bakeries, with most of their kitchens favouring hipster-friendly seasonal small plates, not to mention low-intervention wines and craft beers.
Most of these new independent businesses run the gauntlet of the seemingly always-congested Stockport Road, tucked in amongst dusty old shopfronts and busy shisha shops.
It feels a bit of a neighbourhood in flux, where you can sit in the sun and sip on some of the best natural wines going as, directly behind you, commuters pump out loud bhangra bangers from their cars and shout angrily at one another from their windows.
No word of a lie, on a recent visit for this piece I actually witnessed a lorry driver pull onto a side street and chase down a car that had cut him off after shouting from his window that he would ‘fight him’. But then, that’s just classic South Manchester for you – and I don’t think I’d have it any other way.
If you ask me – it’s just the kind of foodie suburb we all need more of, with longstanding favourites like Leve Bakery Shawarma continuing to thrive alongside the trendy new guard.
Yes, we have lost a few good places here in recent years – notably Aunty Ji’s and The Gherkin – but overall, it’s still very much worth a visit. Please, God, let’s all go and spend some money there before another one shuts.
So, on that note, let’s dig into where it is that you should be booking.
This cool neighbourhood bar and restaurant might be serving up some delicious, fancy small plates and cocktails, but it’s also the sort of place you can bring the whole family on a day out to Levenshulme.
There’s something for everyone on the menu, ranging from perfectly crispy pork belly with pickled spinach and home-fermented hot sauce, to squishy hush puppies showered with parmesan, and one of the best house burgers we’ve had in some time.
Nordie’s spicy mango margaritas, made fiery with a splash of ancho reyes chile liqueur, deserve a special shout-out, as do some of its local producers – especially Stockport butchery Littlewoods, who provide the meat for that much-thought-about burger of theirs.
This women-owned and run natural wine bar and shop sits on a busy high street and looks somewhat unassuming from the front, but dive inside and you’re guaranteed to sample some of the tastiest morsels going in Levenshulme right now.
Opened by Caroline Dubois (former sommelier at Where The Light Gets In) and Isobel Jenkins (Seasons Eatings supper club), the focus here is on sustainable practices and producers, with plenty of tasty bakes, small plates, and the occasional pop-up supper club.
Caroline is more than happy to chew your ear off about her passion for wine, which seems, frankly, infinite, so don’t be afraid to ask for a recommendation – she puts a lot of work into sourcing each bottle, often visiting the producers before buying a new case.
This independent tap house and bottle shop is much bigger than it looks from the front, with three rooms stretching right to the back and plenty of seating for drinkers.
Home to modern small batch brewery Ventile Brew Co, find a mixture of Ventile beers and others from breweries local to Greater Manchester – spanning sherberty lemon sours, chocolatey stouts, and hop-forward pale ales.
Bright and colourful inside, its team, as you might expect, is incredibly knowledgeable on the beer front. In the back, you’ll also find shelves upon shelves of boardgames, perfect for wiling away the sort of wet and windy summer afternoons we’ve been having here lately.
Located in an old sweet shop on a suburban back street, this adorable little neighbourhood bakery comes from former Pollen patissiers Jenny and Bethan.
Serving up the likes of beautifully laminated croissants, dill pickled Danish, scrumptious homemade pop tarts, and plenty more, the women-owned and women-run bakery is open Wednesday to Saturday starting early in the morning until 3pm.
Up on a shelf behind the counter, they still have a few big jars of old-school boiled sweets in a nod to its days a corner shop – but we’re not entirely sure if they are for sale, or just there for the nostalgia.
You can also pick up bags of coffee here, and whilst doing your shopping peer into the open kitchen in the back to see exactly what it is they’re going to be putting out on the counter next.
Whilst city dwellers know and love Trove’s Ancoats bakery and restaurant, if you get the chance to come up to Levenshulme and visit its original spot it’s well worth doing so.
The team here is serving up freshly baked sourdough, pastries, cakes, jams and chutneys, all made in-house, alongside stunning brunch dishes such as seasonal croissant loaf French toast, eggs Benedict and a vegan breakfast of aubergine, panisse, cannellini beans, mushroom, cavelo nero, seasonal chutney, tahini, and toast.
One of the charms of Trove being a bakery first is that the menu allows you to choose your own bread, kind of like a posh Subway but a million times better – with choices spanning white and wholemeal sourdough, white bloomer, and 100% rye fennel (the latter a personal favourite).
From the new to the old, so we have to talk about Leve Bakery Shawarma – something of an institution in this part of Manchester.
Admittedly, the pictures above are taken from a recent visit to their newly-opened Edgeley Road takeaway in Stockport – but on a recent visit to Levenshulme, I couldn’t fail to notice how many people were sitting outside enjoying lamb and chicken-stuffed samoans for their mid-week lunch.
The fact that the team here has just opened a second site is a testament to its success in a climate where 10% of all administrations are now attributed to hospitality closures, and it’s safe to say the food here is completely worth all the hype that it gets.
Also worth trying here is the Lebanese Fatayer, a Middle Eastern folded pizza/pie hybrid baked with a variety of vegetables and meat, and the Lahmajun – a crispy Levantine flatbread topped with minced meat, vegetables, and herbs.
Where do you love to eat in Levenshulme? Let us know where else we should go by dropping us a message on Instagram @themanceats.
Five Manchester artists we’ve been listening to this month | June 2025
Danny Jones
Hello there. That greeting may be giving Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars vibes, and we can’t lie, we have listened to some cantina music while working this month… but not as much as we’ve been immersing ourselves in more new Manchester artists.
You should know the drill by now, and it is very much a what-it-says-on-the-tin scenario, but every few weeks, we round up some of the music – all crucially hailing from the Greater Manchester area – that we’ve been listening to of late.
We don’t discriminate when it comes to genre either. There’s only one simple rule: if it’s good, then we listen to it and then, hopefully, so do you.
Get your playlists at the ready.
Five Manc music artists we’ve been listening to recently
1. Arkayla
First up for June are relative newcomers Arkayla, whose name is inspired by “a terrible Oasis demo” from 1991 (their words, not ours – thought it is…) of the same name, a.k.a. ‘I Will Show You’, in which describe Liam Gallagher’s now legendary as once sounding “like a dodgy Ian Brown impressionist.”
However, there’s nothing dodgy about these lot and, thankfully, they’re in an era when you don’t have to hand out tapes recorded in the Boardwalk basement on the street to be heard. The Manchester band, which only formed in 2020, may be Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, but they’ve already got a sound.
There’s an unmistakable British indie element to them and hints at everything from The Kooks to The Lathums, but most notably, there are ’60s guitar notes and some real maturity already. Standouts include ‘Ella Malone’, the acoustic version of ‘Lost In a Valentine’, where the lead singer, Cal Blakebrough, really shines, and ‘Rita’ is such an addictive track.
They don’t get more unknown, undiscovered, but sure to be up-and-coming than iNNAFIELD, who are a female-fronted psychedelia-forward five-piece with roots in Brighton but building a career in 0161. Having recently shone at The Deaf Institute playing a support slot at Academy 1, they have our interest.
If a glimpse of lead singer Jessie Amy Leask’s curly hair, 70s belts and long, flowing skirts plants Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac in your mind, you’d be right in thinking so; a listen to their other live tracks scattered across their socials confirms there’s plenty of other influences going on too, though.
Now, they’ve only got one proper recording out on Spotify called ‘Tell Me What’s On Your Mind’, but we’ve had it popping up on our algorithms everywhere, and we can see why: there’s soft, twinkly strumming, soft almost sleepy vocals before a nice big breakout at the end. Glorious stuff.
No, not that one, the Princess of Monaco isn’t back from the dead, but ‘r Grace Kelly, who is based right here in Greater Manchester, is playing her part in the ongoing country revival taking place across the music world, offering her soulful voice and faux American-folk vibes to our ears.
She may not be a Mancunian by birth, having moved from New Zealand to our shores back in 2022, and although the weather change might have been a big sea change for her, there’s no culture shock to be found in her style; from the audio to the aesthetic, it still somehow feels pretty authentic.
Uplifting acoustic guitars, drum brush strokes, solos, Southern-twang harmonies – you name it, all the ingredients are there. The thing is, if you spend enough time immersing yourself in a genre, you can still pull off tracks like ‘Carry On’, ‘San Jose’ and the intimate ‘For Us To Change’.
We’re really lane switching when it comes to genre this month; maybe it’s because festival season is in full swing and we’re just being exposed to so much different stuff in a short space of time, all we know is we’re not complaining about it.
And neither should you, especially when you’ve got names like hip-hop, grime, soul and flag-flying Afrobeats rising star, Prido, being platformed. Blending all the above with R’n’B and a sprinkling of not just Northern but easily detectable Manc slant, it makes his music stand out in the ever-thriving space.
‘Free Ur Mind’ was the first track we ever heard, so we’ve struggled to shake that as our favourite, but ‘DND’ is a supremely dancey but chill example of laid-back of the genre that you need in your mixes this summer, and we also have a soft spot for his verse on the sensual ‘Lifeboat’ by Prima.
Last but not least on our list of new Manchester artists for this June, we’ve got local DJ Josh Baker, whose name you might recognise from the headlines surrounding Parklife 2025, as his set was unfortunately cancelled due to problems out of his control.
Festival-goers flocked to The Matinee Stage for a highly anticipated back-to-back bill of Baker followed by Dutch counterpart Chris Stussy, both of whom have thrilled some of the biggest club crowds in the country – sadly, he didn’t get to do so this time. That being said, we thought we’d give him a shout-out.
We’ll confess to only having got around to his discography following this news, but ‘Back It Up’, ‘Something To Me’, and ‘You Don’t Own Me’ with Prospa and RAHH are all bangers. We’re looking forward to listening to more.
And that should just about do you; there are five artists and, at the very least, 15 new tracks for you to give a go – there should be at least of few of them you like.
But, let’s be honest: be it unheard, new, current, old or anything in between, Manchester music very rarely ends up being filed in the skippable category.
Then again, you can always check out last month’s list of Manc artists from last month and see if you get a better hit ratio.
Featured Images — Prido (via Facebook)/Arkayla (via X)/Grace Kelly (via Facebook)
Feature
You can sleep in a luxury train carriage at an old railway station in Greater Manchester
Thomas Melia
There’s an Airbnb listing in Delph where you can stay in a classic converted train carriage, and it’s even situated in an old train station, so someone buy my ticket ASAP.
Get ready to have the best train experience of your life, as the only cancellation you have to worry about is booking the day off work.
The Carriage at The Old Station is a two-person character property in Delph, Saddleworth that offers you the chance to live out your vintage fantasy by stepping back in time on a luxury static train coach.
It may be situated at an old station, but the interior is refreshing and light with mint blue beams, fuchsia cushions and a royal red carpet and curtains.
As well as a majestic interior, this carriage has an equally impressive amount of amenities, including a Bluetooth sound system, board games and its own indoor fireplace.
This Airbnb is fairly new too, with only 44 reviews to its name – the first only dating back to September of last year; don’t say we don’t find you some absolute gems.
Inside the Airbnb that’s an old converted train carriage.The interior of this Airbnb listing is bold and impressive.
One user even stated, “We regularly stay in five-star locations and this surpassed five-star easily! We highly recommend a stay here.”
While another opened her review with three simple adjectives that we also feel perfectly sum up this train carriage property perfectly: “Opulent, indulgent, extravagant”.
It should come as no surprise that this place is beautiful inside and out, as in the description, host of the property Nigel states he’s a retired designer.
The train carriage stay is also close to a proper country pub, The Old Bell Inn, as well as the Diggle canal walk if you fancy a stroll and a pint before tucking into bed in your old train carriage for the night.
Even the bathroom has pops of colour throughout.You could stay in this train carriage at an old train station.
If you’re after boarding The Carriage at The Old Station and having a fabulous overnight stay or mini holiday of your own, you can find the Airbnb listing and everything you need to know HERE.
Georgina Pellant -
4th August 2023 
