A new award-winning pie shop has landed in the city centre, just in time for payday.
Ate Days A Week, Stockport’s music-themed pie shop, has made the move over to Manchester – opening its doors on Cooper Street this Wednesday inside the former Porky Pig unit.
Open from 8am in the week and 10am on weekends, its new Manchester cafe menu boasts a number of breakfast pies filled with all your go-to Full English delights, alongside some rotating all-day favourites.
Head inside and you’ll find classic hand-shaped pies in flavours like steak, cheese and onion and chicken balti, alongside some delightful breakfast additions.
Think a Full English pie, filled with all your classic breakfast favourites, and another called ‘Bake Me Up Before You Go Go’ – stuffed with bacon beans, cheddar cheese, hash brown, black pudding and Brown Sauce gravy.
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And that’s not all. There are pie barms for the Wigan purists, breakfast barms and beans on toast for local construction and office workers, plus sausage rolls, chocolate chip cookies, and some brilliantly named hot sandwiches (lest we forget, the team are really well known for butites, too).
Currently on the blackboard, you’ll find ‘I Ham The Walrus’ (fried eggs, chips, and picalilli) and ‘Bartender and The Beef’ (braised steak, Welsh rarebit, caramelised onions, and a pot of gravy for dipping).
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These, however, are set to rotate over time, just like the pies.
All of Ate Days A Week menu is currently available to enjoy as a takeaway, but in a couple of weeks, the cafe will be open for dining in too – with a new 40(ish) cover restaurant space currently being installed upstairs.
The music-themed eatery has made quite a name for itself with dishes like Don’t Look Back In Banger and (I Just) Died In Your Barm since launching in Stockport in 2020.
The brand has had a meteoric rise, having transitioned quickly from being a takeaway-only site to opening its first bricks and mortar site in a former chippy, before moving into Manchester.
When owner Andy James announced the move earlier this year, he said that he wanted to “move Ate Days A Week to a site that allows us to continue to push on with what we do, get bigger and better and fully flourish”
He also acknowledged that “location will play a vital part”, and now we’ve seen exactly where the shop is – we can completely understand why.
Feature image – The Manc Group
News
Record 29 million people expected to drive home for Christmas this year
Emily Sergeant
Drivers are being told to prepare for long queues, as a record number of festive trips are predicted across the UK ahead of the big day.
With the festive season generally known to make the roads nationwide busier than usual, travel warnings have now been issued to all those making Christmas getaway trips for the holidays – with an annual study by the RAC and INRIX suggesting that 29 million journeys are planned before Christmas Day arrives.
Nearly half of these journeys (14.3 million) are set to be crammed into this coming weekend.
But, as Christmas falls mid-week this year, the figures suggest there will be an extended period of ‘pre-Christmas panic’ on the roads, with 5.7m trips taken yesterday and today alone.
The true festive getaway kicks off tomorrow (20 December), with an expected 3 million trips on this day, before the figure then jumps up to 3.7 million and 2.9 million this coming weekend (Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 December) – which is the final weekend before the big day itself.
A record 29 million people expected to drive home for Christmas this year / Credit: Geograph
By far the single busiest day, however, has to be Christmas Eve, with 3.8 million separate getaway journeys expected by car, on top of the final flurries of commuter traffic.
To make matters worse for everyone, the RAC’s research has also revealed that a further 4.7 million trips are expected at some point between the 20 and 22 December, and 2.5 million on either the 23 or 24 December, all coming from motorists who haven’t yet decided which day they’ll travel.
When it comes to the best and worst times to travel over the festive period, the research has revealed that the worst time to travel along major routes will be between 1pm and 7pm, especially tomorrow and Saturday, so both the RAC and INRIX are suggesting that drivers set off early in the morning, or later in the evening when the heaviest of the traffic should have subsided.
After the big day, there are an additional 4.4 million trips predicted on Boxing Day and 3.8 million on Friday 27 December.
On these days, drivers are advised to avoid major roads during the hours of 10am to 3pm, which is when journeys are expected to take significantly longer than usual.
A third of Brits want police to immediately ban drink drivers at the roadside
Emily Sergeant
A third of Brits support giving police powers to immediately ban drink drivers at the roadside, a new survey has revealed.
Ahead of the festive travel season, where a record number of people are expected to hit the road and make journeys all across the UK over the next couple of days, the RAC has asked more than 2,500 drivers to give their thoughts on the state of the roads for 2024’s edition of the Report on Motoring, and found that tougher sentences were the most popular solution among motorists for tackling the problem of drink-driving.
With instances of drink-driving said to be responsible for the deaths of some 300 people in 2022 – which is when the latest data on this was collected – four in 10 motorists (38%) believe harsher sentences are the answer.
A third of drivers (33%) also support giving the police new powers to immediately disqualify drink-drivers at the roadside once they’ve been stopped.
A third of Brits want police to immediately ban drink drivers at the roadside / Credit – Vladimir Proskurovskiy (via Unsplash)
The idea that convicted drink-drivers should have alcohol interlocks, also known as ‘alcolocks’, fitted to their vehicles to prevent them driving if they have any alcohol in their system, was favoured by 32% of those questioned by the RAC.
A similar number of drivers (31%) also want to see roadside breathalyser testing increased.
When it comes to drug drivers, results from the RAC’s survey are a similar story, only higher – with almost two-thirds of all drivers (64%) supporting tougher sentencing for drug-drivers, and 56% saying they would like to see increased levels of roadside testing.
Just under half (49%) of motorists questioned want the police to be able to immediately disqualify drug-drivers at the roadside.
Speaking on the findings from the RAC’s survey, Chief Constable Jo Shiner, who is the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for roads policing, commented: “In policing, we see the damaging impact of drink and drug driving all too often, and every fatality or serious injury which happens as a consequence of this is completely avoidable.
“Driving under the influence of drink or drugs puts everyone at risk – individuals, families, businesses and whole communities.
Georgina Pellant -
27th April 2022 
