Manchester

Manchester’s Italian bottomless brunch with flaming pasta and endless mimosas

Three courses of fine Italian food and 90 minutes of endless cocktails - sign me up

Georgina Pellant Georgina Pellant - 4th April 2022

A restaurant in Manchester has launched an Italian bottomless brunch with flaming truffled cheesy pasta and endless mimosas, and we are completely here for it.

Offering three courses of cheese, pasta and classic Italian mains alongside traditional, homemade desserts like tiramisu, Cibo Manchester at the Great Northern Warehouse is firmly putting the lunch back into bottomless brunch.

Priced from £45, you’ll be treated to a full sit down meal and 90 minutes of non-stop brunch favourites like mimosas and glasses of prosecco.

Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats

Dish wise, think Italian favourites like pizza, spaghetti carbonara, mushroom risotto, mozzarella and squash-stuffed arancini balls, or – on the more premium option – flaming pasta with cream and oregano, flambeed with cognac in parmesan cheese and truffle oil at your table.

As for drinks, as well as mimosas and prosecco, you can also enjoy endless signature cocktails from Cibo’s bar such as Mangiami (vodka, bubblegum and strawberry) and Bevimi (dark rum, mango and passion fruit) from both menus.

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Only available at the restaurant’s newly-opened Great Northern Warehouse site, if you opt for the premium offering (£65) your dish choices become even more indulgent.

Image: The Manc Eats

Diners going all-out can get stuck into the likes of cream-filled mozzarella with cherry tomatoes and caramelised balsamic, homemade meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce, and seared king scallops served in their shell with grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

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Elsewhere, find folded calzones stuffed with mozzarella, salami, ham and mushroom; ricotta and spinach ravioli in a butter and sage sauce; and pink salmon with asparagus, baby prawns and cream.

Image: The Manc Eats

This is really the menu to opt for when you’re splashing out, or you’ve got someone you want to impress – this is no basic bottomless deal. This is the elite.

Served inside Cibo’s swanky new Great Northern restaurant, opened at the end of last year, the swanky eatery is all yellow-gold and burnished copper with exposed industrial details and a cluster of filament bulbs making a statement above the impressive bar area as you enter.

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Split across four different levels, seating is tiered with plump comfy booths lining the wall on the top mezzanine level giving views across both Great Northern Square and the glitzy interior of the restaurant below.

Image: Cibo Manchester

Cibo Manchester’s bottomless brunch menus are available for a minimum of two people per table, to be able to enjoy the offer your entire table must be dining from a bottomless brunch menu.

Last bookings are at 3pm and must be made 48 hours in advance. Terms and conditions apply.

To find out more and book your table, click here.

Feature image – Cibo Manchester

Manchester

‘Do not let Britain’s independent businesses disappear on your watch’ – Manchester bakery makes heartbreaking plea to Andy Burnham

Clementine Hall 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.”

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Barbakan Delicatessen Ltd. (@barbakandeli)

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”.

You can read the full letter here.

Read more: Entire Blossoms band rock up to independent takeaway for ‘best sandwiches in Manchester’

Featured image – The Manc Group

Manchester

The independent Manchester gym that’s spent eight years getting the city’s office workers stronger

Daisy Jackson 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.

Read more:

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.

Featured Image – The Manc Group

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