A local restaurant in south Manchester has slammed ‘really unfair’ customers who pulled a no-show on Christmas day itself.
Family-run Indian restaurant Khandoker, in Didsbury, has said that it faced a disgraceful 30 no shows on Monday 25 December.
That’s 30 diners who failed to show up for their reserved table and failed to notify the restaurant that they weren’t coming.
Khandoker said in a frustrated post on Facebook that it was particularly unfair on the staff who were away from their own families to work serving people on Christmas day.
They also stressed that to skip out on a reservation creates a large amount of food waste and overall financial loss for local businesses.
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The Kingsway restaurant has also said that the no shows will be banned from dining there in the future.
They wrote: “Over 30 No shows on Christmas Day is really unfair on all our hospitality staff who had to show up early and be away from there families to prepare for a busy day!
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“It also creates a lot of food waste and overall loss for the restaurant trade. Please be respectful and call up if you can’t make it.
“The no shows will be banned from the restaurant in future. Not a great start to Christmas.”
Khandoker said it had taken deposits for all tables but hadn’t charged people for their full Christmas dinner upfront, which they thought ‘was fair at the time’.
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The business has been flooded with messages of support from customers.
One person said: “That’s disgusting. I think in future you should take full payment by the beginning of Dec. The majority of place are doing this nowadays.”
Another wrote: “Totally disrespectful to both foh and boh staff.”
Someone else commented: “Disgraceful! You were very fair only taking deposits but they didn’t show any appreciation on the day so you know what to do next time.
“It’s ignorant people like this who make things hard for the rest of us but I completely understand why businesses charge the full amount upfront because of cases like this!
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“Those places could have been filled if they’d given you enough notice! Hope everybody had a good day regardless.”
One of Manchester’s grandest restaurants has finally reopened TWO YEARS after fire
Daisy Jackson
One of the most historic restaurants in Manchester has reopened at last, two years after a fire forced its closure.
Mount Street Dining Room & Bar – which many of us may remember as Mr Cooper’s – stands within the Grade II-listed Midland Hotel.
The grand dining room dates all the way back to 1903, when it opened with the hotel as the Grill Room.
The restaurant was at the epicentre of the Industrial Revolution and was frequented by railway travellers, perhaps best-known for hosting a lunch between Charles Rolls and Henry Royce in 1904, who went on to form the world-famous Rolls-Royce brand.
The Midland’s restaurants has gone through several changes in the decades since, undergoing a major £14 million refurb in 2020 to relaunch as Mount Street Dining Room & Bar.
Its interiors are inspired by the hotel’s early 1900s art deco and railway heritage, with a menu that focuses on locally-sourced British produce.
But the restaurant has been shut since early 2024, when a fire damaged the entrance and trellising around its main entrance on Mount Street.
The beautiful bar areaA glimpse of the menu at Mount StreetCocktails and British food
The Midland has finally managed to get the restaurant back open again this month, with a new food and cocktail menus, which aims to offer refined but simple British dining.
Expect dishes like pork and black pudding bonbons, white onion soup with crispy potatoes, smoked British salmon with lemon gel and dill mascarpone, and slow cooked beef daube with confit garlic mash.
Plus desserts such as rice pudding with Anise glazed pearsand Bakewell pudding with cherry syrup.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen inside this beautiful, storied dining room – and it looks just as beautiful as we remember.
Daisy Jackson -
27th December 2023 
