Eats

Renowned Stockport restaurant Where The Light Gets In is heading to Manchester for a very special event series

The series includes a conceptual pop-up fast-food diner and a banquet.

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson - 15th October 2024

Acclaimed Stockport restaurant Where The Light Gets In has just announced details of an exciting five month-long residency in Manchester city centre.

The Green Michelin Star restaurant, famed for its seasonal tasting menus and natural wines, will be opening a temporary concept restaurant and a series of events right across town.

Where The Light Gets In: A Play in the City will take over two venues (as well as the city streets) – The Bungalow at Kampus and community space Altogether Otherwise in NOMA.

It’s a bit of an unusual concept but just bear with us here.

Although billed as a ‘four-act programme’ that has been presented like a play (complete with scenes), this incredible project from Where The Light Gets In (WTLGI) is really a series of pop-up events, from workshops to dining experiences, across Manchester.

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The events will include a free night of natural wine and food, a conceptual pop-up fast-food diner, film screenings, walking tours, a pop-up restaurant, panel talks, and a full-blown banquet.

You’ll even be able to go litter-picking and trade in your bag of rubbish for a glass of wine.

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Where The Light Gets In: A Play in the City will run between 21 November and 30 March, kicking off for the first month with ‘A Man Eating A Leg Of Chicken’.

This will be a free-entry, no-reservations pop-up where you can drink natural wines and ‘gorge on shellfish and animals roasted over wood’.

There’ll also be weekend takeovers from WTLGI’s favourite labels and record shops at Altogether Otherwise.

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Altogether Otherwise in NOMA will be used as a venue for the Where The Light Gets In Manchester residency. Credit: Supplied
Altogether Otherwise in NOMA will be used as a venue for the Where The Light Gets In Manchester residency. Credit: Supplied

From early January until 2 February, Where The Light Gets In will turn The Bungalow at Kampus into a conceptual fast-food restaurant The Land of Cockaigne, from wood-fired burgers to ice cream floats to spritzy grape juice.

It’ll involve self-serve counters, name tags and sauce udders, with the option to order a takeaway with an automated phone service.

In February, it’ll be Une semaine de bonté (A WEEK OF KINDNESS) at The Bungalow, with a restaurant ‘dressed with the beginning of spring’ serving simple dishes celebrating the arrival of a new season and delicious wines.

And finally in March, there’ll be the Luncheon of the Boating Party banquets, where guests sit at one long table and eat family-style platters with plenty of wine.

Sam Buckley from Where The Light Gets In. Credit: Supplied
Sam Buckley from Where The Light Gets In. Credit: Supplied
Sam Buckley from Where The Light Gets In. Credit: Supplied

Alongside those four main events will be masses of foraging and gardening workshops, walking tours, Q&As and loads more.

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The intention of the concept restaurant and residency is to bring Where The Light Gets In’s passion for sustainability and great food right into the bustling city centre for five months that combine food, art, and urban living.

The restaurant team has asked: “Are we heading to a cataclysmic dystopia or can we rewrite the future?

“Set against the backdrop of the city of Manchester, this programme explores the tension between city life and rural tradition, asking critical questions about food systems, and our own identity within nature, the city, and the arts.”

Where The Lights Gets In in Stockport is headed up by acclaimed chef Sam Buckley and is easily one of Greater Manchester’s best and most exciting restaurants.

Tickets are available from midday on Tuesday 15 October.

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Full programme for Where The Light Gets In: A Play in the City Manchester residency

ACT 1: “A MAN EATING A LEG OF CHICKEN”

SCENE: A bustling Metropolis.
When: Thursday to Saturday, 21 November to 21 December 2024, 5pm-11pm
Where: Altogether Otherwise, NOMA, 6-10 Hanover St, Manchester M4 4BB
What: We raid the cellars of WTLGI to bring you our favourite natural wines from the continent. Gorge on shellfish and whole animals roasted over wood. Weekender takeovers from our favourite labels and record shops. Welcome to your now. Welcome to the city.
How: Free entry, no reservations

ACT 1 events highlights (running alongside):
Opening night party: Living Room Dance Club 21st November 2024, 5pm-midnight
Honest shop: Thursday, Friday & Saturday 12pm-4pm

ACT 2: THE LAND OF COCKAIGNE

SCENE: A fast food restaurant.
When: Monday to Sunday, 10 January – 2 February 2025. 5pm-late
Where: The Bungalow at Kampus, Aytoun St, Manchester M1 3GL
What: A conceptual fast-food diner. Churning out wood-fired burgers, ice cream floats and spritzy grape juice. It’s self-service counters, name tags and sauce udders. Eat in or take away using our automated telephone service. Grab a tray and find a seat, welcome to the future of convenient feeding: fast-paced and unlimited choice.
How: Head HERE to reserve your seat, or order a takeaway for collection on our phone line. Open for walk-ins also.

ACT 2 event highlights:
Film screenings. Altogether Otherwise
DATE TBC Silo: The Zero Waste Blueprint – Q&A with Douglas McMaster & Sam Buckley
DATE TBC WTLGI X SILO MEAL
Manchester Utopia – The Modernist walking tour

ACT 3: Une semaine de bonté (A WEEK OF KINDNESS)

SCENE: A pleasant garden; simple and sufficient
When: Monday to Sunday, 3rd February – 2nd March 2025. 5pm-late
Where: The Bungalow at Kampus, Aytoun St, Manchester M1 3GL
What: A clean and well-lit restaurant dressed with the beginnings of Spring. We offer a moderate choice of simple dishes carefully prepared with ingredients selected for their freshness and relevance to the time and place. A thoughtful selection of wines from small-scale producers.
How: Head to HERE to reserve your seat. Open for walk-ins also.

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Act 3 event highlights:
Panel discussion on the history of communal green spaces.
Open Call for Manchester Chefs: Master Whole Animal Butchery with Samuel Buckley and Marcus of Littlewoods Butchers, followed by a meal for EatWell.
TRIAGE: A Pickling walk-in centre. Drop in with your veg and we’ll help you to preserve it. 12-2 Friday.
Film screening Altogether Otherwise
Urban Foraging Walk & Litter Picking: A guided exploration of local green spaces, teaching participants to identify and gather wild edibles. Pick a bag of litter, get a glass of wine on us.
Book tables with a stranger – In this act we encourage discussion and conversation around the dinner table. It is often the non-tangible delights that arouse pleasure and satisfaction.

ACT 4: LUNCHEON OF THE BOATING PARTY

SCENE: A long wooden table in the middle of a garden.
‘And if one day my wisdom should desert me – ah, it loves to fly away! – then may my pride too fly with my folly’
When: Monday to Sunday, 3 March – 30 March 2025. 5pm-late
Where: The Bungalow at Kampus, Aytoun St, Manchester M1 3GL
What: Join us for a banquet to celebrate the finale of our residency in Manchester. Guests will sit at one long table and enjoy an array of dishes designed to eat family-style. Platters of vegetables, meats and fish will adorn the centre of the table. We will share, we will pour wine.
How: Head HERE to reserve your seat at the table.

Act 4 events:
Hand-drawn ‘fruit maps’ that plot the locations of fruit trees and foraging spots, growing on, or overhanging, public space in Manchester.
Urban Gardening Workshop: Led by Manchester Urban Diggers, participants learn to cultivate their own urban gardens, regardless of space constraints.

Read more: Northern Quarter transformed as Peaky Blinders creators film new Netflix series House of Guinness

Featured image: Supplied

Eats

Tawny Stores – Inside the stunning canalside restaurant that’s Stockport’s loveliest addition

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson Tawny Stores in Marple Bridge. Credit: The Manc Group

There’s a tiny little opening on the outskirts of Stockport that’s so charming, with such delicious food, that we’re going to have to insist you all rearrange your plans to visit immediately.

This is Tawny Stores, a restaurant, cafe and deli where you can do everything from having a romantic candlelit dinner to scoffing a morning pastry to grabbing a loaf of bread to take home.

With a pretty canalside location, and windows that look out over the water, it’s already proving a fantastic addition to Greater Manchester.

Tawny Stores is in Marple Bridge, a picturesque village at the foot of the Peak District hills (which feels a million miles from Stockport, but the name on the wheelie bins doesn’t lie).

It may be a total pain in the arse to get to, especially with every-other train being cancelled, but getting stuck out here is far from being the end of the world.

From their tiny kitchen they cook an ever-changing menu that’s technical, but simple.

By the time you read this the menu will probably have changed again, but here we go anyway.

Rabbit pie at Tawny Stores in Marple Bridge. Credit: The Manc Group
Rabbit pie at Tawny Stores in Marple Bridge. Credit: The Manc Group
A cheese toastie at Tawny Stores.
A cheese toastie at Tawny Stores. Credit: The Manc Group
Homemade crisps and a glass of wine. Credit: The Manc Group
Homemade crisps and a glass of wine. Credit: The Manc Group
Roast squash and lentils. Credit: The Manc Group
Roast squash and lentils at Tawny Stores in Marple Bridge. Credit: The Manc Group

We had a wild rabbit, cider and tarragon pie, with a crust that could win awards and a generous dollop of silky smooth mash.

There was a simple cheese and onion toastie, elevated by some top-quality bread and homemade chutney on the side.

A warming pile of lentils was then topped with roasted squash and a zingy and herby green sauce to zap it (and you) back to life.

And then there’s homemade focaccia, which you can order with olive oil or have it as a sandwich, where fillings are currently festive and include squash and stuffing, crispy sprouts and aioli, and pork Milanese and cranberry.

Inside Tawny Stores, Marple Bridge, Stockport. Credit: The Manc Group
Inside Tawny Stores, Marple Bridge, Stockport. Credit: The Manc Group
Tawny Stores in Marple Bridge. Credit: The Manc Group
Tawny Stores in Marple Bridge. Credit: The Manc Group

Before you head out, take a moment to browse the shelves full of produce (and the display unit filled with homemade cakes).

You can grab a hot drink to walk down the canal and burn off some of that fuel, or do it in reverse and come in here to warm your cockles after a brisk winter stroll.

Either way, it’s one to visit – and soon.

You can follow them on Instagram HERE for their latest menus.

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Featured image: The Manc Group

Eats

10 of the best new bars and restaurants to open in Greater Manchester in 2024

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson Blacklock is one of the biggest and best openings in Manchester of 2024. Credit: The Manc Group

Another year has ticked by and once again, Greater Manchester has proven itself as a global heavyweight when it comes to new bars and restaurants.

As the city expands ever-further, with new neighbourhoods springing up like daisies, there’s been a flurry of new openings across the city region.

From the small teams painstakingly hand-rolling pasta or laminating croissants to much larger ventures flinging out sunny brunch dishes or slabs of meat, there’s been something to excite just about every palate in 2024.

With so many new spots to check out, you’re bound to have missed a few – so we’ve pulled together our 10 favourites to add to your visit list in 2025.

And don’t forget to follow The Manc Eats on Instagram for the best food and drink all-year round.

Cafe Continental, Stalybridge

Cacio e pepe pasta. Credit: The Manc Group
Cacio e pepe pasta. Credit: The Manc Group
Soup and a steak sandwich. Credit: The Manc Group
Soup and a steak sandwich. Credit: The Manc Group
The Paris hot chocolate. Credit: The Manc Group
The Paris hot chocolate. Credit: The Manc Group

In smaller Greater Manchester towns, new openings don’t come along every day – which might be why Cafe Continental caused such a stir initially when it launched in Stalybridge.

But as the months have ticked on this neighbourhood restaurant has proved that it’s far from a flash in the pan.

It looks like it’s been plucked from a pretty Parisian back street and has a menu that will stand the test of time, from a cacio e pepe pasta with an egg yolk on top to spicy twice-fried chicken buns and steak sandwiches.

That’s alongside excellent cocktails and one of the internet’s most viral sweet treats, a proper Paris hot chocolate, where you dollop thick cream into dainty cups of molten hot chocolate.

You can read more about it here.

Blacklock, Peter Street

Blacklock's cocktail trolley which roams their Manchester restaurant. Credit: The Manc Group
Blacklock’s cocktail trolley which roams their new Manchester restaurants. Credit: The Manc Group
Blacklock's all-in platter outside their new Manchester restaurant. Credit: The Manc Group
Blacklock’s all-in platter outside their new Manchester restaurant. Credit: The Manc Group

Easily up there with the biggest openings in 2025 is Blacklock, which ventured out of its native London for the first time this year and landed in a basement unit on Peter Street.

Here, it’s all about the meat-heavy menu of reasonably-priced British classics, affordable cocktails, and its legendary white chocolate cheesecake scooped straight from the dish and dolloped onto your plate.

Blacklock is a modern take on a traditional chop house and proudly offers ‘hearty fare and rowdy comfort’.

A menu highlight is their all-in platter, where chops are piled high on charcoal-grilled flatbread which soaks up the meat juices. Delicious.

You can see more here.

Onda, Circle Square

Pasta and pizzetta dishes at Onda in Manchester
Pasta and pizzetta dishes at Onda in Manchester
Pasta and pizzetta dishes at Onda in Manchester. Credit: The Manc Group

Surely one of the greatest success stories in recent years, Onda has gone from a humble kitchen within Exhibition food hall, to a resident at New Cross in Ancoats, to its very own shiny restaurant at Circle Square in the blink of an eye.

From this massive new space, you can watch a team of chefs carefully making fresh pasta in the open kitchen, and glimpse their now-viral tiramisu drawer in action.

Even six months down the line, it’s damn-near impossible to book a table here, with people still waiting months to sample their delicious pastas, including fan favourites like nduja and vodka sauce, cacio e pepe bucatini, and a selection of thick-crusted pizzettas.

The tiramisu might have sent their popularity sky-high, but the quality and prices here prove that it deserves every bit of success coming its way. This place is not a novelty.

Rudy’s, Prestwich and Altrincham

Rudy's Altrincham. Credit: The Manc Group
Rudy’s in Altrincham. Credit: The Manc Group
Rudy's Prestwich. Credit: The Manc Group
Rudy’s Prestwich. Credit: The Manc Group
Rudy’s opened two new restaurants in Greater Manchester this year

Some might think that Rudy’s is getting a little big for its boots, now with 29 restaurants across the UK – properly impressive growth considering they were just a tiny pizzeria in Ancoats less than a decade ago.

But these top-quality Neapolitan-style pizzas are the stuff of legend for good reason and are pulling in big crowds in every suburb they land in.

This year alone they’ve launched new restaurants in Altrincham and another in Prestwich, the latter of which has gone into a vacant bank building on the high street of the Greater Manchester suburb.

Will anything ever stop these guys in their tracks? Doubt it…

Medlock Canteen, Deansgate Square

Fresh baguettes stuffed with rotisserie chicken straight out of the oven
Fresh baguettes stuffed with rotisserie chicken straight out of the oven. Credit: The Manc Group
Inside Medlock Canteen. Credit: The Manc Group

Bottomless coffee, rotisserie chicken, epic sandwiches, schnitzels, and big brekkies, all served in a delightfully mid-century modern interior – we were excited for Medlock Canteen before the doors even opened.

Moving into the skyscraper neighbourhood of Deansgate Square, this place comes from the same team behind Madre (the Mexican restaurant at Kampus) and Belzan (one of Liverpool’s top restaurants).

It’s had a few rave national reviews and pulls in a steady crowd, thanks in part to its proximity to Club de Padel. Going straight from court to cocktails is a pretty dreamy Manchester evening.

They’ll even let you order a portion of whatever the staff dinner is that night for a tenner.

Companio, Northern Quarter

Companio Bakery in the Northern Quarter
Companio Bakery in the Northern Quarter
Maritozzi from Companio Bakery
Maritozzi from Companio Bakery
Credit: The Manc Group

It’s always been one of Manchester’s best bakeries, but its original location on the very edges of Ancoats sort of kept it a bit too out of the way.

So when Companio announced a new spot in the heart of the Northern Quarter, bringing its loaves and pastries that little bit closer, the city centre rejoiced.

On the menu you’ll find sandwiches in freshly-baked bread, maritozzi bursting at the seams with cream, delicious coffee, seasonal bakes and loads more, in a gorgeous new cafe on an NQ back street.

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You can even pull up a seat right next to the bakery so you can sit and watch loaves being lovingly shaped and baked right in front of you – now that’s my kind of show.

Hive Stores, Altrincham

Hive Stores in Altrincham, Greater Manchester
Hive Stores in Altrincham, Greater Manchester
Hive Stores in Altrincham, Greater Manchester

It’s not every day that Greater Manchester gets a new business quite as beautiful as the bar at Hive Stores, which is filled with gorgeous antique furniture, a general store, and a cafe.

The business had previously operated as an antiques store from a ramshackle building out the back – but when this roadside space came up next door, they snapped it up and transformed it into a timeless, character-packed community cafe and bar.

You can pick up some eggs and have an espresso martini at the same time, tuck into a cheese board and a few glasses of wine, grab a Half Dozen Other pastry, or sit on the pavement with a spritz and people-watch.

It’s operated by Steven Sherratt and Gareth Wilkins and you’re guaranteed a warm welcome every time. A must-visit.

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Check out our full feature here.

Stow, Bridge Street

Dishes at Stow are seasonal and cooked over open fire. Credit: The Manc Group
Dishes at Stow are seasonal and cooked over open fire. Credit: The Manc Group
Stow in Manchester
Stow in Manchester

This is the newest spot on the list, and if you’ve not already jumped on the bandwagon it’s one to add to your list for 2025.

What sets Stow apart from the rest is its innovative cooking style – no ovens, no conventional appliances, just fire and grill. Everything on the menu – even their bread and cake – is cooked over open fire.

They’ve totally transformed the space on Bridge Street too, which has at various points over the last few years been a futuristic coffee shop, a Thai BBQ restaurant, and a wine bar.

Stow is owned and operated by Matt Nellany and Jamie Pickles from Trof, who want to celebrate the ‘simplicity of great ingredients cooked over open fire with very little faff’.

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Read more here.

Caravan, St John’s 

Cheese and kimchi on toast at Caravan in Manchester
Cheese and kimchi on toast at Caravan in Manchester
Caravan is ready to open in St John's, Manchester

It would be quicker to list what Caravan doesn’t serve than what it does, but every single thing on their all-day menu is executed to the highest degree.

From brunches to sourdough pizzas, coffee to cocktails, grain bowls to brioche puddings, the menu harks from sunny New Zealand (as do its three co-founders).

Caravan is a wildly popular name down in London and finally landed here in Manchester in the summer, with a massive new 170-capacity restaurant and a full working roastery.

Menu highlights include jalapeño cornbread with chilli butter, Korean-style buttermilk fried chicken with kimchi pancakes, and, of course, fry-ups.

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RamenShop, Northern Quarter

Ramenshop in the Northern Quarter. Credit: The Manc Group
Ramenshop in the Northern Quarter. Credit: The Manc Group

Alright this one technically isn’t a new opening, rather a rebrand – but something about that shiny new sign above the door made us fall back in love with RamenShop (formerly Tokyo Ramen) all over again.

The team who run the show here – Janven, Marc and Mark – have actually been given partial ownership of the restaurant, which is a lovely bit of positive hospitality news for a change, isn’t it?

Their concise menu sees 12-hour chicken broth bases piled high with perfect noodles, proteins and jammy eggs, including their best-selling ‘fire’ ramen, topped with crunchy koji-fried chicken, and the classic shoyu that’s topped with torched pork belly.

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Featured image: The Manc Group

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