If you love a good curry, but can never quite seem to recreate that restaurant standard when you’re cooking up a storm at home, look no further – because Manchester’s legendary Indian restaurant Zouk Tea Bar is here to show you all the tricks of the trade.
The award-winning Manchester curry house is famous for its high-quality dishes, and proudly shows off its chefs through its Manchester restaurant’s semi-open kitchen.
Found just off Oxford Road, at Zouk diners can watch the chefs hard at work – making fluffy, fresh naans in the tandoor oven and simmering aromatic curries on the industrial-size stoves – from the restaurant floor.
But for those really eager foodies, Zouk is now breaking down that fourth wall and inviting diners into the kitchen to learn tips and tricks from the curry masters themselves.
Video: Zouk Tea Bar
Diners can opt to don their own aprons and take a spin in the kitchen themselves, learning how to cook popular British curry house favourites like chicken tikka masala and lamb rogan josh from the masters themselves.
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And that’s not all, you’ll also get to grips with how to make onion bhajis, chicken tikka and seekh kebabs from scratch – just as it’s done in the restaurant.
There are also vegetarian and vegan course alternatives available for those who want to learn but don’t eat meat.
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Zouk’s curry school gives die-hard curry fans the chance to get up close and personal with their favourite dishes, with the kitchen’s best chefs on hand to skill you in you how to properly prepare a selection of different Indian starters and mains.
Starting at 10am and finishing at 1.30pm, all courses run for half a day – and in that time you’ll be initiated into the world of Indian cooking, learning how best to prepare your spice mixes and simmer down dishes for the perfect consistency.
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Taking place on 18 June, more information and tickets for the British Favourites cookery class can be found on Zouk’s website here.
Feature image – Zouk Tea Bar
Manchester
‘Do not let Britain’s independent businesses disappear on your watch’ – Manchester bakery makes heartbreaking plea to Andy Burnham
Clementine Hall
A beloved Manchester bakery has issued an open letter to Andy Burnham ahead of the Budget begging him for help.
Barbakan Deli in Chorlton is basically an institution at this point.
The legendary bakery and delicatessen has been serving the community for 62 years, famed for its freshly-baked loaves of bread, its handmade sandwiches, and its pastries and cakes inspired by bakes from across Europe.
Posting on Instagram last night on Thursday 18 September, Frankie Dyer the director of Barbakan, issued an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
Images: The Manc Group
It read: “Dear Mr Burnham, As an independent business owner in the hospitality sector, I am begging you to please read this.
“Really read it. And seriously consider what businesses like mine are telling you before the upcoming Budget.”
It continued: “In just the last two years, we have self-funded new bakery machinery, new catering kitchens, essential repairs and renovations and opened a second retail site, creating another six local jobs. We have won more than ten national awards for the quality of what we do.
“We have invested. We have grown. We have employed more people. We have worked harder than ever. In short, Prime Minister, we are doing everything you keep asking British businesses to do.
“And our bank balance is finished. That is the reality.”
The letter finished by Dyer inviting Andy Burnham to come visit the bakery and pleading for a ‘fighting chance’ to save the business: “We need action. We need meaningful reductions in the tax burden placed on employers.
“We need Employer National Insurance looked at urgently. We need a business-rates system which allows independent high-street businesses to survive. We need VAT reform for hospitality. We need Corporation Tax to reward businesses which reinvest, employ and grow.
“And we need proper grants and incentives that help established independent businesses invest and expand — not schemes with endless criteria which most ordinary businesses can never access. We need you to do something.
“And we need more than one token gesture in the Budget. A band-aid for a bullet wound. So I am asking you, Prime Minister, to come back to Manchester and see it for yourself. Pop an apron on and stand behind our counter.
Images: The Manc Group
“Come into our bakery in the middle of the night and meet the people making Manchester’s bread while most of the city is asleep. Look at our payroll, our energy bills, our rates, our supplier increases.
“Look at what leaves our bank account every single week simply for the privilege of keeping 50 people employed and our doors open. You said you wanted a government that understood the regions. You now have an opportunity to prove it.
“Independent businesses across this country are not asking for a handout. We are asking for a fighting chance. I sincerely hope your next Budget gives us one”.
The independent Manchester gym that’s spent eight years getting the city’s office workers stronger
Daisy Jackson
In a city centre that has changed almost beyond recognition over the past eight years, one Manchester gym has stuck to a simple idea – getting people stronger shouldn’t have to take over their lives.
Tucked away on Kennedy Street, opposite Manchester Town Hall and just a short walk from St Peter’s Square tram stop, P1 Fitness Studio is celebrating its eighth year in business.
This local success story has been built by husband-and-wife team Peter and Abby, who wanted to build the kind of gym they actually wanted to train in themselves, after becoming increasingly frustrated with what they saw as the ‘normal gym scene’.
Their answer was to create something different: a smaller, calmer space where people could be coached properly, recognised when they walked through the door and actually enjoy coming to train.
Eight years later, Peter and Abby are still hands-on in the independently owned business, working alongside a coaching team of five.
Welcome to P1 Fitness, in Manchester city centre / Credit: The Manc Group
There is no franchise model or corporate head office. Just the same basic philosophy they started with in 2018, which seems to have resonated with a particular part of Manchester.
P1’s members are predominantly busy professionals – lawyers, architects, creatives, teachers, business owners and office workers – many of them in their 30s, 40s and beyond.
For people spending much of their working lives behind a desk, the proposition is deliberately straightforward – you don’t need to live in the gym to become stronger and healthier.
P1 believes two properly coached strength sessions a week can make a meaningful difference.
Sessions last 50 minutes and run throughout the working day, meaning members can train before work, at lunchtime or after work. There are showers, changing facilities, towels and toiletries too, making it possible to fit training around a working day rather than the other way round.
More recently, the studio has added an infrared sauna, giving members somewhere to recover and switch off before heading back to the office or home.
The independent Manchester gym that’s spent eight years getting the city’s office workers stronger / Credit: The Manc Group
P1 specialises in small group personal training, with a maximum of six people per coach.
Everyone follows a structured strength programme, but the coaching is adapted to the individual. Exercises, weights, and progressions can all be changed depending on someone’s ability, goals, injuries or simply how they’re feeling that day.
So someone picking up a barbell for the first time can train alongside somebody who has been lifting for years, without either being pushed through the same generic circuit.
It’s also not the kind of gym where you’ll see your own reflection staring back at you at every turn, because the focus is on becoming stronger and moving better, rather than how you look.
The idea is longevity – looking after your joints, maintaining muscle, building strength, and staying capable of doing the things you want to do outside the gym as you get older.
Or, in P1’s own words: “Built stronger to last longer.”
And there’s some impressive evidence that the approach has encouraged people to stay the course.
Based on its current schedule of roughly 75 coached sessions a week, P1 estimates it has delivered more than 31,000 coached sessions across its eight years.
Some of the people attending those sessions have been there since the doors first opened.
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Rather than celebrating short-term transformations, P1 marks the less glamorous (but arguably more meaningful) milestones: members receive T-shirts when they reach 100, 250, and 500 training sessions.
That means there are members whose relationship with the studio is measured in hundreds of coached sessions and several years, rather than a six-week challenge.
And over time, the gym has become something more than somewhere to lift weights.
P1 increasingly describes itself as a ‘third space’ for Manchester professionals – somewhere between home and work where people can train, switch off, see familiar faces and feel part of a community.
People train alongside many of the same faces each week, and coaches get to know the people they’re working with.
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There are socials, themed workouts, challenges, member celebrations and charity events to really build that P1 community – for example, members raised more than £1000 for Parkinson’s UK through a bake sale last year.
The business has also increasingly taken its philosophy beyond its own four walls, working with Manchester companies and corporate teams on strength training and health education, including sessions around women’s health, men’s health, nutrition and sustainable strength training.
P1 has won Best Strength Training Gym of the North West at the National Fitness Awards in 2023, 2024 and 2025, while also being shortlisted three times for the National Fitness Awards’ Functional Training Gym of the Year UK award.
But perhaps the more remarkable achievement is simply making it through the last eight years as an independent city-centre business.
Since P1 opened, Manchester has had to navigate Covid and lockdowns, the huge shift towards home and hybrid working, and the major redevelopment around Town Hall and St Peter’s Square.
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The city centre around the studio has changed dramatically, but the basic idea inside P1 hasn’t. It’s not just a gym, but a third space with a barbell in the middle of it.
Find out more and book your first sessions with P1 in Manchester HERE.
Georgina Pellant -
31st May 2022 
