Just a month after award-winning Northern Quarter ramen spot Cocktail Beer Ramen + Bun (CBRB) announced its closure, bosses have revealed plans to hand the keys to a former employee.
Tom Potts, a former bar manager at the late-night Oldham Street favourite, will soon be taking over the restaurant and turning it into a Kong’s Chicken Shop.
Whilst still working for CBRB, in 2021 Tom took advantage of the furlough scheme to start his own specialist fried chicken sandwich business – even cooking and serving his first sandwiches out of CBRB’s kitchen whilst the restaurant was closed.
So it makes sense that, when the restaurant was forced to shut for good, the first business they approached about taking on the lease was Kong’s Chicken Shop.
Image: Kong’s Chicken Shop
Image: Kong’s Chicken Shop
Over the past two years, Kong’s has moved from pop-up to pop-up. Tom has seen some great success: opening concepts at different locations in Manchester and experimenting with diner food, sandwiches, meat’n’three, roast dinners, tacos, loaded fries, ramen, bao and kebabs.
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At the heart of his menu, the star has always been the same. Using thigh meat, the chicken at Kong’s is brined for three hours, rolled in a secret spice mix, then double-dredged for a crispier texture.
The brand now has three different pop-up sites across the city, with a Kong’s Diner in Dog Bowl, a Kong’s Cantina in Black Dog Ballroom, and a sandwich/burger shop at Hatch street food village.
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And finally, he is poised to open his first permanent restaurant back where it all began. How fitting.
Kong’s has previously hosted a collaboration with CBRB and Asahi where Tom’s signature fried chicken made an appearance in steaming bowls of ramen and fluffy bao buns, and given his propensity for playing with different cuisines we wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the new menu nodded to the site’s history.
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However, if that is the plan he’s not letting on yet – telling The Manc that the new eatery will serve a diner-style brunch with fried chicken French toast, free refills on filter coffee and dedicated bloody mary and Irish coffee drinks menus.
Image: Kong’s
Image: Kong’s
As for lunch and dinner, the plan is to keep things classic with the chicken sandwiches and wings that built up the Kong’s concept in the first place. There’ll also be a selection of nice small plates and larger sharers, with a focus on grilled meats and flatbreads.
As for Sundays, fans of the OG fried chicken roast dinner will be pleased to hear that the dish is set to make a return. With a bar offering running late into the evening, some of the late-night feel will carry over from the CBRB days soundtracked by lots of punk music.
Tom said: “I’m excited to be working on drinks again, it’s been fun. I can’t wait to be able to show off what we can do in our own space, it’s a dream come true.
“Obviously it’s really sad about CBRB closing but at least there’s a silver lining. It means a lot to us to be in the building where we first started and that I worked at since the beginning. We’re excited to be able to show what we can do and really do justice to what came before.”
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Beloved ramen business CBRB officially closed its doors after one last bowl on Sunday 12 February, having announced the news of its closure with a frank and heartbreaking statement.
In it, the late-night Oldham Street business outlined the ‘massive financial strain’ it’s been facing, describing the obstacles that are ‘affecting everyone in the hospitality industry right now’.
CBRB stressed the staggering costs of goods and the doubling of energy bills as the ‘massive factors’ that have forced their hand.
First opened on Oldham Street in 2018, after five years the team has announced it will now hand over the keys to Tom who will turn CBRB into Kong’s NQ.
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In a joint statement released to Instagram, the two businesses wrote: “A Silver Lining // Since the announcement of our closure, we have been inundated with support + lovely messages from you beautiful people.
“But it’s time for a bit of good news… lets be honest, we all need some of that right now.
“Those of you that have been with us from the beginning, will remember our OG Tom.
“Tom was with us from day dot, helping build CBRB (literally) + was a huge part of making this lil ramen gaff the place it was. After flying the nest in 2021 to pursue his own food concept @kongskitchens , using the CBRB kitchen for their first pop up + coming back together a year later for our first ever collab.. we are now super happy to be able to say that the place we’ve called home is going to be staying in the fam.
“You may of seen the news that Kongs will be opening their own venue in the NQ recently + we’re dead chuffed to announce they will be moving into our old home at 101-103 Oldham Street.
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“We’re super proud + happy that after all this, there is a silver lining to our story.
“Give them a follow if you’re not already + stay tuned for more updates on the opening loves!”
Feature image – The Manc Group
News
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?…
Featured Images — Yorkshire Tea/Rumman Amin (via Unsplash)
News
Manchester palaeontologist unearths bones of what may be the largest known marine reptile
Emily Sergeant
A Manchester-based palaeontologist has unearthed the bones of what may be the largest known marine reptile.
This new identification is a crucial part of a fascinating eight-year long discovery journey.
It all started when a seasoned fossil collector named Paul de la Salle found a giant jawbone on Lilstock Beach, near Bridgewater in Somerset, back in May 2016, and then father and daughter, Justin and Ruby Reynolds from Devon, found the first pieces of a second jawbone and another giant bone while searching for fossils on the beach at Blue Anchor, also in Somerset, in May 2020.
And now, a palaeontologist at the University of Manchester (UoM) Dr Dean Lomax, has identified the fossilised remains of the second gigantic jawbone that measures more than two metres long.
Experts have identified these bones as belonging to the jaws of a new species of enormous ichthyosaur – which is a type of prehistoric marine reptile – and astonishing estimations suggest the oceanic titan would have been more than 25-metres long.
Dr Lomax has been working together with Justin and Ruby Reynolds, along with Paul de la Salle and several family members, since the father-daughter duo first contacted them about their groundbreaking discovery in 2020.
A Manchester palaeontologist has unearthed bones of what may be the largest known marine reptile / Credit: UoM
“I was amazed by Justin and Ruby’s find,” Dr Lomax commented.
“In 2018, my team and Paul de la Salle studied and described Paul’s giant jawbone, and we had hoped that one day another would come to light.”
He explained that Justin and Ruby’s new specimen was “more complete and better preserved” than the first find, and that he “became very excited” at the chance to learn more following their discovery.
As mentioned, the Manchester-based research team, led by Dr Lomax, revealed that the jaw bones belong to a new species of giant ichthyosaur that would’ve been about the size of a blue whale, and they have called the new genus and species Ichthyotitan severnensis – which means ‘giant fish lizard of the Severn’.
The bones – which represent the very last of their kind – are around 202 million years old, and date back to the end of the Triassic Period in a time known as the Rhaetian.
During this time, the gigantic ichthyosaurs swam the seas while the dinosaurs walked on land.
The University of Manchester, where Dr Dean Lomax works as a palaeontologist / Credit: UoM
Ichthyotitan is not the world’s first giant ichthyosaur, but the discoveries by Paul, and Justin and Ruby, are said to be “unique among those known to science”, as they appear roughly 13 million years after their latest geologic relatives – including Shonisaurus sikanniensis from British Columbia in Canada, and Himalayasaurus tibetensis from Tibet in China.
Speaking on the confirmation of the bones’ identification this week, Dr Lomax said: “This research has been ongoing for almost eight years.
“It is quite remarkable to think that gigantic, blue whale-sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around what was the UK during the Triassic Period.
Georgina Pellant -
3rd March 2023 
