Where to find the best frozen cocktails in Manchester this summer
Think frozen Vimto daiquiris, Pornstar martinis, Aperol Spritz and margaritas by the bucketload - plus some interesting curveballs you might not expect.
With this week turning out to be an absolute scorcher here in Manchester, we’re already making tactical plans to get out there and enjoy a drink (or a few).
Forecasts are predicting that the city is going to be hotter than Istanbul this week (how novel), and as much as we love the idea of sitting out all day, keeping cool is high up on our agenda.
That said, there’s nothing like a heatwave to get your in the mood for an ice-cold drink – and we honestly can’t think of anything more cooling than a frozen bev, which is why we’ve put together this go-to-guide to help you find the best that Manchester has to offer.
Yes, in previous years, some of us cocktail enthusiasts may have been a bit snobby about frozen drinks – but after a few years locked in our houses, we’ve all deserved a little bit of silliness and fun, and these drinks absolutely deliver.
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From boozy smoothies, to alcoholic slushies, frozen martinis, Irish coffees and even Snakebite, keep reading to discover where to go to sip on some of the best icy bevs the city has to offer.
Smithfield Social – Frozen Aperol Spritz
Image: The Manc Group
The ultimate summer cocktail, but make it frozen. Smithfield Social has taken the classic Italian aperitivo favourite to a new level for 2022, turning it into an ice-cold slushie that’s perfect for the summer. Low ABV and full of flavour, it might just be the best frozen cocktail we’ve seen (so far) this summer.
Sicilian NQ – Frozen watermelon margaritas
Image: Sicilian NQ
Hidden down a little backstreet in the Northern Quarter, Sicilian NQ is easy enough to miss – but don’t you dare. The tiny bar and kitchen has just launched a new range of frozen margaritas, all priced at just £5 during happy hour, which runs Monday to Thursday, 12pm to 5pm. Enjoy them in three flavours: classic, Sicilian and watermelon.
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Ramona
The banana + pandan frozen margarita. / Image: Ramona
The frozen pineapple and ginger margarita. / Image: Ramona
If you’re after something a little bit wilder, head to converted MOT garage Ramona for your frozen cocktail fix and a big fat Detroit slice. Yes, they do frozen margarltas, and, yes, you can opt to get them bottomless, but be adventurous – the banana + pandan is a certified house favourite, and pineapple + ginger is well worth a look-in too.
Ah Vimto, you’ll always have a special place in Manchester’s heart. Drunk hot, cold, and now frozen with a couple of shots of rum thrown in for good measure, there’s never a bad time to enjoy this fruity cordial. First manufactured here as a health tonic in 1908, it’s still giving us life all these years later.
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Crazy Pedro’s – Frozen boozy Twistas
All frozen margs at Crazy Pedros get more than a double shot of their house tequila (El Tequileño Blanco). / Image: Crazy Pedro’s
Crazy Pedro’s takes its frozen cocktails seriously, serving them up in five different flavours. From a frozen Twista ice lolly-flavoured cocktail to frozen Pornstar Martinis, Woo Woos, and both classic and strawberry margaritas, there’s plenty of choice to keep you going. Oh, and they’re all available on the bottomless brunch too.
Pico’s, Mackie Mayor – Frozen margaritas
Image: Eat Picos
Pico’s are not fair weather frozen cocktail fans – far from it. You can find them slinging out frozen margaritas with a chilli salt rim all year round both at Manchester’s Mackie Mayor and at Altrincham’s Market House, alongside the best nachos and tacos you will find in the city centre.
Smooch – Frozen strawberry daiquiris
Image: The Manc Eats
Altrincham bubble tea shop Smooch hasn’t been open that long, but it’s already become quite the favourite with local kids. Following requests from the Trafford town’s parents for an ‘adult’ version, they’ve recently launched a new boozy menu featuring frozen strawberry daiquiris and pina colada bubble teas.
Tucked under the Mancunian Way at the Hatch street food village, you’ll find Kong’s latest export slinging out half-pint cups filled with frozen margaritas, alongside their cracking new sandwich menu. We think a crisp butty and a frozen marg in the Hatch garden sound just the thing.
Junior Jackson’s – Frozen snakebite and Irish coffees
Image: Junior Jackson’s
The little brother to popular Manchester dive bar Bunny’s, Junior’s can be found in a basement on the Northern Quarter’s Oldham Street slinging out a plethora of frozen bevvies.
Frozen snakebite and frozen Irish coffees both sound incredible to us, but if you just want something fruity you can also get frozen daiquiris here in three different flavours – strawberry, pina colada and passion fruit. Oh, and you can get them all down at Bunny’s too.
7Sins – Frozen cocktail sharers
Image: The Manc Eats
Think frozen cocktails, but supersized for the whole group. Stevenson Square bar 7Sins has gone the whole hog this summer with some new frozen sharers, including the Passionbowl (essentially a giant jug of Pornstar martini) and Super Bramble (gin, lemon and blackcurrant).
The Garratt – Frozen pornstar martinis and daiquiris
Image: The Garratt
At just £5 each or two for £8, these are some of the cheapest frozen cocktails to be found in the city centre. Head down to popular Princess Street boozer The Garratt, a long-time favourite of Manchester’s skaters and students alike, for a rotating selection of ice-cold drinks, game of pool and an easy-to-land spot in the sun.
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Lock 91 – Frozen daiquiris
Image: The Manc Group
With a gorgeous little beer garden hidden away from view, Lock 91 is another place to put on your frozen cocktail list on a sunny day. The house frozen strawberry daiquiri here is made from scratch, fresh to order.
Herd NQ – Frozen pornstar martinis
Image: Herd NQ
This little Northern Quarter steakhouse is delivering the goods on the frozen cocktail front, with frozen Pornstar martinis and three different boozy slushies on offer. Think a ‘pineapple express’ boozy smoothie with mango and spiced rum, a ‘watermelon sugar’ version, or a ‘frozen berry blast’ with added gin and apple.
Have we missed one? Let us know over on Instagram by dropping a message to @themanceats.
Feature image – Ramona
Food & Drink
This Manchester food hall is selling ice cream made from the world’s stinkiest fruit
Georgina Pellant
A Manchester food hall is serving up a new ice cream flavour that it claims is the stinkiest in the world.
For those unfamiliar with durian, it’s essentially the marmite of the fruit world. Famous for having a truly terrible smell that’s been unfavourably compared to cat p*ss, it’s so pungent that it’s actually been made illegal to eat it on the subway in Singapore.
No such restrictions apply here in Manchester, though, where Hello Oriental, the new(ish) three-storey Asian street food hall on Oxford Road, is causing something of a stir with its stinky but delicious new addition to its soft serve menu.
Served in cute little bear and taiyaki fish-shaped cones, typical flavours on offer through the week here include ube (purple yam), pandan leaf, charcoal, mango and vanilla.
Credit: The Manc GroupThe durian soft serve Credit: Supplied
But now, alongside those brightly-coloured, exotic soft serve flavours you’ll also find something a little bit more controversial. Durian soft serve.
Whilst no one seems to disagree on the terrible stench, when it comes to how the fruit actually tastes there are a mixture of comparisons.
Managing to be sweet, creamy and savoury all at once, some say it tastes like “diced garlic and caramel poured into whipped cream”.
The new supermarket at Hello Oriental. Credit: The Manc Group
Others have referred to “subtle hints of chives mixed with powdered sugar”.
Described by Hello Oriental as “one of the most addictive flavours to ever cross your tastebuds”, it’s safe to say that South Asia’s durian fruit ‘isn’t for everyone’ but, if you can get past its uniquely ferocious pong, you are in for a deliciously wild ride.
Available from Hello Oriental on weekends only, the durian batch of soft serve is specially prepared by the team fresh on Saturday and Sunday mornings and available to enjoy from 1pm.
Located just off Oxford Road, around the corner from Hatch, Hello Oriental offers uncensored East Asian street food across three storeys.
Comprising a restaurant, bar, cafe, events space and fully stocked supermarket, it recently received a rave review in the Times, with Marina O’Loughlin calling it a “northern powerhouse of Asian street food”.
Featured image – The Manc Eats
Food & Drink
Manchester restaurant famed for ‘inflexible’ tasting menu completely flips the script
Georgina Pellant
Since its arrival in Manchester, Michelin-recommended new wave Thai BBQ favourite District has staked its reputation on two things: fantastically surreal, delicious food and an extremely inflexible tasting menu.
Until recently its diners have had two choices, opt for the ten-course tasting menu or spring for the twelve, and whilst everyone I’ve ever known to go has swooned in delight over the whole experience, there’s no denying it hardly makes for a cheap night out (or an easily organised one).
Deposits have always been required up front, and adaptions have famously never been made for a customer’s dislikes, or even religious needs. It’s for this reason, and this reason alone, that until last week I’d never made it over – despite wanting desperately to go.
Simply put, I’d just struggled to find anyone prepared to give up a whole evening (and a shed load of cash) to come with me. Amazing, I know, but thankfully, that’s all now changed.
Last year, the kitchen made headlines after getting embroiled in a ‘religious diet’ row with a Jewish customer who’d taken umbrage with its refund policy.
The whole affair culminated with District posting the entire altercation to its social media pages, alongside a caption stating it ‘will not be bullied or threatened into returning deposits’.
During the row, the customer had asked, “why not shout loud on your homepage ‘We don’t cater for Jews’”. Still, they held firm.
A year on and it seems that external pressures may have caused that iron will to buckle, because for the first time ever the Michelin-acclaimed restaurant has moved to offer dishes individually.
Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats
In a complete change of direction, diners can now pop in off the cuff to enjoy a few plates and a couple of drinks. Personally, I think it’s the best news ever, but then I would. It’ll be much easier to get my friends in now.
Suddenly one of the best restaurants in the city has become so much more accessible, and its timing couldn’t be better. After all, we’re all getting poorer, and whilst not everyone has £100 to spend on dinner, everyone deserves a taste of the magic happening in the kitchen here.
Whilst the restaurant maintains that diners can either curate their own District experience or simply pop in for a few dishes, on our visit it is very much a small plate, tapas-style service, with everything appearing on the table in front of us in quick succession.
Translucent stone bass (£9) floats alien-like in its dish with crispy purple yam antennae suspended above a shimmering nam jim, whilst a pinky-purple pigeon satay (£9) is rich and gamey, dressed with sweetcorn, pumpkin seeds and crisped turnip all unfolding on the plate like a flower in bloom.
Every dish here is a surprise, ranging from a beautifully fresh salad of peach, pear, ginger and shrimp floss, to chicken fat rice, which comes showered in a generous helping of crumbed crispy skin.
Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats
That rule extends into the desserts too. Homemade ‘tangfastic’ tamarind and chicken fat fudge sweets appear, suspended, on their own white marble platform like some sort of futuristic offering.
Elsewhere, a calamansi curd pavlova with sheeps yoghurt and passion fruit reinvents any preconceived notions I might have had about Thai food – or pavlova for that matter.
As Marina O’Loughiling wrote in her review of District for The Times last year, this is “Thai, but not as we know it”.
Speaking on the change of direction for the restaurant, owner Ben Humphries said: “We are passionate about creating the highest quality experience for our customers.
“Our aim is to capture the essence of Thai flavours whilst maintaining the highest quality produce, suppliers and dishes.
“Changing our service style will give us creative freedom in the kitchen. We can develop dishes that don’t have to fit into a tasting menu format. We will also have the opportunity to offer daily changing special dishes.”
The new menu is available now with bookings being taken under ‘New Wave Thai’ on District’s bookings page here.
Georgina Pellant -
11th July 2022 
