One of Greater Manchester’s grandest spaces has been reborn as a food hall and bar, with six traders inside.
This part of Oldham’s Old Town Hall, now with an ultra-modern new extension standing alongside its historic porticoed frontage, is now home to the 150-capacity space.
The old Egyptian Room’s original features, like its beautiful ceramic tiled walls and pillars, and its arched windows, have been perfectly preserved.
And now there are green leather booths and large tables sprawled around the space too.
The new food hall, The Egyptian Room, has traders serving everything from pizza and pasta to noodles and gyros.
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Ply Pizza are here serving heaped bowls of pasta, including beef shin parpadelle and carbonara, plus their signature pizzas like the pistachio pesto topped with a gooey burrata.
TukTuk has a menu full of Cambodian goodness like light bite street food items, sharing platters, spicy noodles and stir fries.
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TukTuk Cambodian food at The Egyptian Room. Credit: The Manc Group
Seacoles is a new name, a Caribbean trader serving tacos and ‘splits’ (which are fried dumplings stuffed with fillings like Cajun spiced stripped beef steak and jerk chicken), and huge plates of curry and rice and peas.
Then there’s The Last Stop, with smash burgers, gyros and loaded fries, and Wings of Power, where there are crispy-coated wings, tenders and burgers.
Arooj Shah, leader of Oldham Council, said: “The old town hall, what The Egyptian Room is part of and this whole complex here, was a really derelict, unloved building.
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Pizzas by Ply at The Egyptian Room. Credit: The Manc GroupSeacoles Caribbean food at The Egyptian Room. Credit: The Manc GroupTukTuk Cambodian food at The Egyptian Room. Credit: The Manc Group
“Jim [McMahon MP] had a vision for this whole building and the one thing Jim and I do share is our passion for Oldham’s heritage buildings and he had a vision to make use of something that was unloved and derelict for a long time.
“The importance of that was not just the history and the contribution of what happened in these buildings before us but actually as a nod to say that even in the most difficult of times, because it’s been hard the last 14 years, it’s a nod to say how much we value our residents.
“How even in the most difficult times, this inspiration and the ambition of our partners is a nod to every single one of our residents and communities, no matter who you are or what your upbringing is.”
The Egyptian Room is open now in Oldham town centre.
New Manchester restaurant receives rave review as another is slammed as ‘torture’
Daisy Jackson
Pip, a new restaurant in Manchester, has received a rave national review this week – a review which slammed another restaurant in the same feature.
Food critic William Sitwell wrote in his review in The Telegraph that Pip is charming, refined, and fabulous.
“Bravo, Pip. Pip pip!” he wrote in the glowing write-up on the new restaurant, which stands at the foot of the new Treehouse Hotel and has the acclaimed Mary-Ellen McTague at its helm.
Sitwell’s Telegraph review particularly raved about dishes including Lancashire hot pot (‘fabulously good’), a wild garlic soup (‘a gorgeous thing’), and an apple trifle (‘a gift from heaven’).
But while it was all good for Pip, there were significantly less positive adjectives heaped on another restaurant in Manchester.
In fact, he said that Pip is ‘a great-value tonic’ for the ‘brash (and pricey) torture’ across town.
That restaurant was KAJI, formerly known as MUSU, which he said was ‘all tummies, bald heads, tattoos and heat’.
Sitwell said that while the service and sashimi are good at KAJI, the ‘place is afflicted by some overbearing cooking that cheapens the noble name of Japanese cuisine’.
He wrote: “Lamb chops fail the tender test and are properly wrecked sitting on a vulgar pond of sticky “tomato ponzu”. No beast should die to have that stuff squirted anywhere near it.
“And Kaji is a Japanese gaff without sake. Which is like opening a British pub in Tokyo and forgetting to put an ale on tap.”
Sharing the review, Pip wrote: “Thankyou @telegraph and @williamsitwell for the fantastic feature. We’re so proud of our team here.”
Milk Maids, Bolton – The family-run ice cream parlour on an award-winning farm
Daisy Jackson
Ice cream doesn’t come much fresher than those served at Milk Maids – in fact, you’ll be standing right on the family farm where the cows that produce the milk live, as you tuck into your scoop.
This unassuming dairy farm in Bolton has been in operation for decades, and in the same family for generations.
But it’s when sisters Fiona and Rebecca saw the full potential of all that award-winning milk being produced on their farm that Milk Maids was born.
This ice cream parlour on Dearden’s Farm in Over Hulton is now one of the hottest spots in Greater Manchester, especially when the weather is similarly hot.
Every month they release a whole batch of flavours, all made fresh daily (you can literally see Fiona legging it across the yard with buckets of milk to make fresh batches), with May specials including white chocolate and sea salt caramel, raspberry cookie, and passionfruit pavlova.
Milk Maids, Bolton – The family-run ice cream parlour on an award-winning farm
Cones can be filled with molten chocolate or pistachio creme before your ice cream is scooped and pressed into the cone.
Or you can have your chosen flavour whizzed up into a milkshake, served in a milk bun, or presented in an insulated take-home box for later.
We could wax lyrical about how good this ice cream is, but the queues really do speak for themselves, and you should go and get in it right now.
Daisy Jackson -
6th November 2024 
