Christmas karaoke huts and curling lanes are coming to Spinningfields
Crazy cocktail bar Clubhouse is hosting a massive month-long Christmas party on Spinningfields Square with karaoke huts, duelling pianos and a 10m long curling lane
Spinningfields’ Square will be transformed into a winter wonderland later this month as wacky cocktail bar Clubhouse takes it over – bringing karaoke huts, a curling lane, and a giant 35ft high Christmas tree along for the ride.
Completely heated and covered in a giant pergola, the square will be transformed into a festive party hub following some careful planning by the cocktail connosieurs behind Clubhouse.
The team – who haven’t yet enjoyed a Christmas together before, thanks to 2020’s successive lockdowns – will be throwing their own version of a Christmas party in the square, complete with alpine karaoke huts, free-flowing Christmas cocktails, live music, and duelling New Orleans-style pianos.
Elsewhere, there’ll be festive cocktails like Santa Baby (pink gin, triple sec, sour, sugar and cranberry) and Life’s A Grinch (kiwi, sour, sugar and coconut) delivered straight to your huts; and a full on festive kebab and loaded fries menu created by the team behind Kong’s Chicken Shop and Meat and Three.
Chipotle orange and cumin pulled pork Christmas kebab with pickled red cabbage, tomato and cucumber, lettuce, garlic sauce, homemade chilli sauce and spiced pickled gherkins (£13) / Image: The Manc Group Chipotle orange and cumin pulled pork Christmas kebab, pulled turkey and cranberry kebab, and loaded fries with pigs in blankets, baconnaise and cranberry hot sauce (£13) / Image: The Manc Group
Think pigs in blanket-loaded fries, a festive poutine with mozzarella, mulled wine gravy and sprouts, plus Christmas kebabs stuffed with your choice of pulled turkey, chipotle orange and cumin pulled pork, mulled wine braised beef brisket, or slow cooked mushrooms and fennel.
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Kicking off next Wednesday, 17 November, a Clubhouse Christmas will be opening on the Deansgate-facing square outside Spinningfields restaurant Australasia next week.
We’ve also heard rumours about a grinch who’ll be roaming the square in the evening – but that’s yet to be confirmed.
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Clubhouse is well known for its crazy cocktails, which come garnished with treats like flumps, custard cremes and Haribo tangfastics / Image: The Manc Group
Music will be on from 7 – 10 pm every Friday and Saturday, with duelling pianists taking requests for everything from Metallica, to Christmas songs, to pop anthems. / Image: The Manc Group
Karaoke huts will be bookable for up to 6 people, priced from £50 an hour with an almost infinite number of song options. There’ll be drinks service direct into the huts, with drinks packages available to add on when you book.
Huts themselves will be priced at £50 an hour, with options for drinks on top priced from £35. For that, you’ll get 6 cans of prosecco served on ice, or alternatively you can opt for three four pint pitchers of Clubhouse pilsner (£50), or for two festive cocktail jugs of your choice (£50).
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The bar will be bringing its wild, party bar attitude to Spinningfields Square from 17 November / Image: Clubhouse There’ll be plenty of drinks pouring at the Clubhouse bar in Spinningfields square / Image: The Manc Group
There’s also a VIP drinks package priced at £100 that gets you a jug of festive cocktail, a pitcher of clubhouse pilsner and 6 cans of prosecco.
As for the 10m long curling lane, an hour on here with up to six people will cost you £60. Just like in the huts, you can pre book drinks or use a QR code to have them delivered to you whilst you play.
Open from 12 pm – 11 pm every day, with last order at 11 pm, a Clubhouse Christmas kicks off on 17 November and runs up to 23 December before taking a short break for Christmas. It will then return on 26 until 30, before breaking for the New Year.
Whilst walk ins are welcome, booking is recommended. Karaoke huts can be pre-booked here.
To keep up with all things Clubhouse Christmas, make sure to follow the Instagram page here.
Featured Image – Clubhouse
City Centre
A new ’boutique’ chicken spot has opened in Manchester’s Northern Quarter
Danny Jones
A brand-new chicken spot called ‘Le Coq Boutique’ has just opened in Manchester city centre, serving out of a popular Northern Quarter bar.
Is this the best name we’ve ever heard in our time writing about food and drink? It just might be…
Opening from inside The Social NQ on Thomas Street (formerly known as Smithfield Social), their new resident and poultry-centric kitchen is a bit of a pun on the classic French sportswear label, but having now been versed in the word about the bird for ourselves, we can confirm it’s much more than that.
For starters, the only thing more decadent than the roasted meats are the sides and cocktail menu, which features everything from chunky hash browns and some of the richest sauces you could ask for.
As you can see, the most chicken is well and truly the star of the show here, but what they have done is find unique ways of innovating and experimenting with it.
For instance, if you’ve never had a cocktail with chicken fat in it, here’s a place you can try one.
Honestly, this isn’t our first rodeo with this very particular kind of drink – but for those of you that haven’t, we promise, it really is quite good.
Aside from surprisingly saline kicks beside the salty marg rims we’ve become more accustomed to over the years, there are some very nice drinks on the menu.
But we’ll be honest, if you’re a sucker for the famous ‘chicken wine’ – a.k.a. La Vieille Ferme, if you want to be all formal – we imagine you’ll be sticking to plenty of this.
Having already spent many a weekend, be that afternoon or night, at the old Smithfield over the years, now that it has this fine new in-house food offering tacked on, we suspect we’ll be going back a lot more.
Whether you want lots of crispy chicken skin or prefer it smothered in gravy and various other kinds of savoury jus, if you’re an unadulterated mothercluckin’ chicken lover, then you’ll have a great time here.
As the team has joked in the comments under their first few social media posts, while it isn’t technically mandatory to wear the vintage 80s brand upon visiting, it is “expected”, with “bonus marks and shots” and promised for your efforts.
It’s also worth noting that they have an exclusive launch offer for those who sort a booking early, so we wouldn’t wait around if we were you.
Let us know what you think if you visit anytime soon.
Bunny Jackson’s offer Foo Fighters and Mancs incredible deal if they play their stage after Ritz gig
Danny Jones
Beloved dive bar Bunny Jackson’s has offered the Foo Fighters and Mancunians alike an incredible deal, provided the legendary band if they play on their stage after their gig at the O2 Ritz.
As well as Manchester ramping up the 2026 BRITs Week buzz ahead of the awards at Co-op Live this weekend, a little-known American rock group called the Foo Fighters decided to announce a surprise gig here in town.
But the bigger story now, we’d argue, is that the city centre boozer – which serves as a regular go-to both before and after gigs – is offering free drinks if Dave Grohl and co. pop up to perform on their usual bandaoke platform. As in for EVERYONE.
As explained by the Bunny’s boss, if the Foos make what is quite literally a minute trip down the road to OG Jackson’s wing joint and late-night watering hole after their Ritz gig is over, they’re promising to hand out free booze to all inside the venue.
Joking that they can quite literally “do anything” and may not even fit on their even smaller stage – with this being one of the tiniest of Manchester’s small-cap venues – it’s worth reminding that they wouldn’t be the first big name to surprise punters.
It was only a couple of years ago that both The 1975 and Olivia Rodrigo showed their faces, with the former getting behind the bar and pouring drinks themselves, and the latter even hopping on the mic herself – yes, really.
Just last March, members of Bilmuri also hopped behind the decks for a DJ set, and saxophone player Gabi Rose couldn’t resist hitting some horns live for the crowd, too.
You might want to be at Bunny’s even if you’re not going to the gig anyway. (Credit: Bunny Jackson’s)
So what we’re telling you is that this isn’t entirely beyond the realms of possibility. Keep absolutely everything crossed.
BJ’s was already hosting a pre- and post-curfew party for the big Manchester gig, as they often do, but just think how incredible it would be if the rock icons actually turned up in person. You can find out what else they’ve got planned on the night HERE.
Not only would it mean free-flowing beer for everyone in the gaff, but this would go down as one of the greatest stories in Greater Manchester music history.
If you want to up the chances of this happening, make sure you share it far and wide, getting @ing and pestering them, and hopefully we’ll see you at Bunny Jackson’s with the boys from Foo Fighters!
Oh, and lads, if you’re wondering why we all love it here, look no further:
Georgina Pellant -
11th November 2021 
