There’s something really special about this time of year – crisp nights, twinkling lights, and many, many pints in bars that have fully embraced the Christmas spirit.
But for a lot of us, getting a festive drink can also mean getting shoved and elbowed and sucked into six-person-deep scrums to get to the bar.
Manchester’s Christmas Markets are world-famous, for good reason, but their popularity does make them astonishingly busy.
Thankfully, there are more than a few local bars opening pop-ups and other festive drinking dens.
Salvi’s Italian Christmas Market, Deansgate Square
Credit: The Manc Group
One of Manchester’s best-loved restaurants has got in on the festive action, in the most impressive setting of all.
Standing at the foot of the awesome Deansgate Square towers is Salvi’s Italian Christmas Markets, with two tipis, four festive huts, and loads of food and drink.
Expect all the Salvi’s favourites like sweet and savoury takes on soffietti (fried doughballs), as well as mulled negronis and limoncello spritzes.
It’s been thrown right back to the 80s over at Hatch, the shipping container street food hub just off Oxford Road.
It’s been kitted out with fluorescent lights and disco baubles, transporting visitors back to a ‘different era when iPhones and ‘furlough’ were yet to enter our mainstream vocabulary’.
There’s food too, of course, like pigs in blankets parmos from Parmogeddon, vegan Christmas burgers from Herbivorous, and Terry’s Chocolate Orange martinis from Miama Ice.
Bar Rumbug, Salford
Our Secret is out….
We didn't quite have time to build our distillery before Christmas so we created something a little special…
Rum drinkers will like this one – the Salford Rum Company has launched its very own Christmas bar this year.
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The temporary space has been opened before it launches its distillery.
It’s been decorated with custom art from local artist Urbie, and will serve drinks from its own rum range (naturally), as well as other local breweries and drinks producers.
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Food & Drink
A tiny new train station pub is set to open at Manchester Oxford Road
Daisy Jackson
A tiny craft beer pub is set to open at Manchester Oxford Road, making all those inevitable train cancellations a little sweeter.
The new boozer will come from the same team behind some of the UK’s best train station pubs, who already have bars at Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Victoria.
A licensing application has now been submitted by Bloomsbury Leisure Holdings Limited to take over the former cycle hub at Manchester Oxford Road.
The small building is directly opposite the entrance to the busy train station on the southern side of the city centre.
If approved, it will be the third site for the pub group in Manchester.
They already operate the Piccadilly Tap, that two-storey beer bar on Piccadilly Approach with a heated rooftop space and outdoor patio.
The team are also responsible for the more recently-opened Victoria Tap, which took over the former bin store at Manchester Victoria.
That particular pub has a heated beer garden constructed just inches away from where the trams tootle past and has a departures board where time is measured by pints (got 10 mins til your train leaves? That’s one pint, sir!)
As for the Oxford Road Tap, a new account on X appeared a few weeks ago that appears to confirm the imminent arrival of a new pub.
The Oxford Road Tap have applied to have opening hours through to half-past-midnight Sunday to Thursday, and until 1.30am on Fridays and Saturdays.
They teased a mocked-up photo of posters outside the station with the new pub logo, plus a slogan of ‘Great beer is just a few steps away…’
They later shared ‘Triple threat incoming’ with all three pub brands lined up as a deck of cards.
Yorkshire Tea is Manchester’s ‘favourite’ brand of teabags, according to new data
Danny Jones
The Great British debate of which teabag is best is one that will rage on for millennia, that’s just the way it is, but according to new data, it sounds like we might at least have an answer to which brand makes for Manchester’s favourite brew.
It won’t be a surprise to many of you and we can certainly confirm it on our end but the one and only Yorkshire Tea looks to have taken the cuppa crown when it comes not only to Manchester’s preferred teabag but seemingly the best-loved in Britain as a whole.
This is according to numbers pulled by local firm, TonerGiant. The Atherton-based ink and toner suppliers decided a poll around the office wasn’t enough and instead chose to turn their knowledge of the market and consumer trends into a bit of online research.
At the end of the day, tea has got to be the most important of all office supplies, surely?
According to the stats, Yorkshire Tea is Manchester’s favourite brand of tea bags. (Credit: Yorkshire Tea)
Using data from trusted online source Statista, which nailed down the top 25 teabag brands in the UK, each make was then ranked in relation to its average monthly searches via Google Keyword Planner to reveal that Yorkshire Tea was clearly the top dog.
With roughly 390 searches per month in Manchester alone, compared to PG Tips as the next best (260), it seems us Mancs have to concede at least one thing to our fellow Northern county: Yorkshire makes a bloody good brew.
The Roses rivalry raged for centuries but if there’s one thing that brings us together, it’s a good cuppa.
In terms of other tea brands that came in high on the leaderboard, Pukka Tea (170), Twinings (140)and Teapigs (90) made up the rest of the top five most-searched tea brands in Greater Manchester. It’s also interesting to see how those figures looked when extrapolated nationwide. Here’s the full ranking:
Rank
Tea
Average UK monthly searches
1
Yorkshire Tea
27,100
2
PG Tips
18,100
3
Pukka Tea
14,800
4
Twinings
12,100
5
Teapigs
8,100
6
Whittards Tea
6,600
7
Tetley
4,400
8
Clipper Tea
4,400
9
Lipton Tea
3,600
10
Barrys Tea
3,600
11
Thompsons Tea
1,300
12
Typhoo
1,300
13
Taylors Tea
1,300
14
M&S Tea
1,300
15
Tesco Tea
1,000
16
Tick Tock Tea
880
17
Sainsbury’s Tea
720
18
Lyons Tea
720
19
Asda Tea
590
20
Aldi Tea
590
21
Waitrose Tea
590
22
Lidl Tea
480
23
Morrisons Tea
320
24
Bewleys Tea
90
25
Cafedirect Tea
40
Few of these on here we’ve never heard of. Taste test, anyone?
While Yorkshire Tea was found to be Manchester’s and the nation’s favourite, Belfast was the only UK city where Yorkshire Tea didn’t take the top spot. Instead, it was Irish-owned Barry’s Tea that came out as their favourite – we definitely need to hold a ‘brew-off’ between the two. The Hoot, you up for it?
As for supermarket’s own-brand offerings, out of the eight options on the list, Marks and Spencer’s teabags were found to be the most popular, closely followed by Tesco and then Sainsbury’s.
Commenting on the findings, TonerGiant’s Stuart Deavall said: “With so many office workers opting for tea to get through the day, it’s no surprise that the UK has a day dedicated to the drink.
“In light of National Tea Day on Sunday, 21 April, our new data shows that Yorkshire Tea is the nation’s favourite, with over 27,000 Brits searching every month… We can expect many Brits to be celebrating in style this Sunday, no doubt with a mug of Yorkshire tea in hand”. Speaking of, anyone fancy a brew?…
Daisy Jackson -
9th December 2021 
