There are carb overloads, and then there is Bread & Bowls‘ Full English breakfast in a hollowed-out loaf.
First launched in February 2020, these ginormous loaves of sourdough – stuffed with fry-up favourites like high-grade local sausages, crispy streaky bacon, beans, cheese, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and hash browns – became something of a hungover lockdown sensation.
Now, Charlotte has revealed that she’s coming back into town, with plans to move her kitchen into brand new Spinningfields coffee shop 92 Degrees later this month.
With a range of dishes designed ‘for the greedy’, as well as the famous Full English breakfast bowls fans of her bready-heavy creations will also be able to get their hands on a full loafed-up lunch and brunch menu.
Served between 8am and 4pm every day, think smashed avo and poached eggs, alongside the signature bread bowls and loaded hash browns topped with cheese and beans, sausages, streaky bacon and a perfect poached egg, all made to order.
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The kitchen is also vegan friendly, with plant-based alternatives available for all meat products.
The move to Hardman Square sees Charlotte take it back to where it all began, having first launched her Bread & Bowl concept here two years ago just before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
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Initially opening at The Tavern (now The Lawn Club) in February 2020, following some incredible pop-ups with the likes of Mary & Archie, Lifeshare and Feel Good Club, she will head back to Spinningfields on 16 September.
However, whilst her bread bowls have been undeniably popular, it hasn’t all be plain sailing.
With just two weeks to go before the Spinningfield launch, she found that she had been locked out of her Instagram account, leaving her “low key losing my sh*t” all thanks to a verification scam.
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Her mum, an admin on the account, saw that she had been tagged in a verification request and uploaded some account details.
The Instagram Verification code scam is a common one, but unfortunately it has hit at the worst time – leaving Charlotte unable to promote her move to her 4,000+ followers just when she needs to communicate with them the most.
She told The Manc: “[I’ve] definitely been stressing alot about loosing the account and getting the word out.”
When they open inside 92 Degrees next week, she tells us that the coffee shop will “boast a cocktail menu alongside their amazing coffee.”
For those unfamiliar with 92 Degrees, it is an independent coffee company first established seven years ago with a single shop and roastery in Liverpool.
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Owners have been successfully operating in the city’s John Dalton Street and Middlewood Locks for the past 18 months, now they will launch their third in the city this month alongside kitchen residents Bread & Bowl.
Speaking from their North West headquarters, Jack said: “Spinningfields is the perfect location for our third site in Manchester and it’s an area that we have been paying close attention to for some time. We’ve enjoyed great success at our two other Manchester outlets and the reception we have received over the last 18 months there has been awesome.
“We are super excited to make our presence known even more so in the city and to get to know our new neighbours and customers. It is a brilliant space that really does lend itself to what 92 is all about, and we are looking forward to being able to call it ours.”
Jack added: “We have literally roasted billions of beans, opened sites all over the country and launched our own products and subscription service – but we will never get over the excitement attached to the launch of a new store. Opening in Spinningfields is another major step in the right direction for us and what we have planned further down the line.
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“Our 92 family is forever growing and the more the business expands, the better our offering becomes. Our Manchester family is just about to get a whole lot bigger, and we cannot wait.”
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?
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.
“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.