- Manchester
- /
- drinking
- (24)
-
United Kingdom
Fantastic basement club in the centre of Manchester. Great staff and good drinks. Just make sure you have your dancing shoes on...
46-50 Oldham St
Northern Quarter
www.mintlounge.com
The 'Hidden Urban Project' is a new addition to the alternative shopping market. Usually housed inside bars, the project provides a relaxed atmosphere that shoppers can enjoy. A pint whilst you shop? I'm recommending it because this should be the future of shopping.
28-30, Oldham Street , Manchester,M1 1JN
Tasty and healthy Lebanese food from a restaurant often overlooked despite its great position in the Northern Quarter. Better still, if operates a bring-your-own-booze policy, meaning an already cheap meal works out even cheaper. Well worth considering, both by travellers on a budget and locals out to try something new.
69 Thomas Street, Manchester M4 1LQ
+44 161 834 5016
I love the restaurant, I love the name, I love the food, I love my home town Stockport.
Food and drink festival between 5 &15 October 2007. Thirty five bars, restuarants and shops around Chorlton and Whalley Range are taking part. Chorlton joins other areas of Greater Manchester for the annual Manchester Food and Drinks Festival.
All over Chorlton-cum-hardy. For more information pick up a festival brochure from outlets including - Barbakan, Pad-chorlton, Unicorn and Wild at Heart
Great place, wrong location, Joe's cafe bar on Oldham Street is a little gem lying in the mud.
Decked out in leather sofas and dark wood tables it could fall into the trap of being yet another Bar 38 or Pitcher & Piano but it's all saved by well cooked food and service that just falls neatly into place.
Get in there and pretend you're in St Anne's Square. It's just as far, as owld Will Mossop would no doubt pipe up.
Oldham Street
Lovely little pocket of restaurants and bars in a happy, well looked-after area of Manchester.
The parks are very enjoyable when hungover the morning after, before a bacon sandwich in one of the many coffee shops.
M20 area 15 mins from Manchester city centre
Although dark, smokey and always busy on a weekend this place is spot on. The music makes this place and the atmosphere just tops it off. It seems strange to go to a place and see everyone smiling! They have a good selection of beers and cocktails, some of the shooters that they do are really good so I'd recommend giving those a go. Bar staff friendly and know what they're doing.
But the eclectic music has a strange way of always making you dance. Beatles followed by some ska followed by elvis then some country, doesn't work you say? It does in Mojo.
PS - Make sure you check the map before you go here, as it's tucked down a dodgy looking backstreet!
19 Back Bridge St
Manchester, M3 2PB
Lovely pub with good food/wine and a chilled atmos. What more could you want?
Oxford Road, Withington. About 3 miles south of the city centre.
Tel: 0161 374 5861
Nice quirky but chilled out pub, in an area usually dominated by student dives punting cheap vodka. Good music, regular DJ and poetry reading nights, good beer and the nicest food - the panninis are brilliant and portions are gigantic!
2a, Landcross Rd, Fallowfield, Manchester, Lancashire M14 6NA
Tel: 0161 224 0467
It is on a small side street just off Wilmslow Road beside the Cheshire Cat.
Unique triangular shaped pub dressed in garish green tiles. This pub is an insitution in Manchester. Three contrasting rooms surround a central bar area from which great Guinness and fine ales are dispensed. This pub has a local feel for a city centre pub with the usual suspects propping up the bar and passing trade all getting along famously.
Great Bridgewater Street, close to Oxford Road and Deansgate stations.
Fantastic beer bar with a great juke box, a nice beer garden and friendly, freaky staff. Best toasties in town.
Swan Street, Manchester not far from Piccadilly and Victoria.
Mother Mac's is an old pub in the heart of Manchester. I watched England vs Portugal in the Euro 2004 semi-finals there and that's a great memory. It's shabby but very friendly and for me and my mate Tomas, to come to Mother Mac's for a few pints of Boddingtons is to come to England.
Mother Macs is on Back Piccadilly in central Manchester, close to Piccadilly gardens.
Tiny little bar in converted public toilets. Dark and full of atmosphere. Wide range of bottled world beers.
Great Bridgewater Street
M1 5JW, Manchester, Just off Oxford Street
A modern-version of an old-fashioned boozer with a good choice of real ale. Just across the road from Deansgate train station. Excellent food as well.
374 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 4LY
The best no frills curry cafe in the city centre. Rice, 3 vegetable curies and naan for under £4. The food is always freshly cooked and delicious. Follow it with a drink at the Odd Bar or Bay Horse further along the street.
Thomas Street, city centre
If you want a two-hour-long, food/beer-sozzled route to see a Manchester City game, as well as a chance to feed some geese, this is my dream route to my seat in the East Stand lower tier from Piccadilly Square: from Piccadilly, with your back to 1960s megalith, Piccadilly Plaza, you head up Tib Street to the YADGAR curry house. If you're veggie, you can get rice and three curries for £3.00 - same price as a pint in some of the Northern Quarter bars. £3.90 and you get lamb or chicken toppings too. Best tarka dhal in Manchester.
After that, you could go further up Tib Street and drink in Centro and then have another pint in the Copper Kettle, a pub whose restoration ran out of money - look at the ceiling on one side of the pub, and then the other. One side was restored, the other remains as it was when the building was almost derelict. However, if you choose to hit Great Ancoats Street at this stage, all there is from there is street and no canal. Instead, after Yadgar, I suggest you go back towards Piccadilly and locate the Mother Mac pub, on a side street off Oldham Street. This, I imagine, will remain like something out of Victorian times even long into another era in which Manchester aspires to make its eastern central section resemble a damper, rainier New York.
From Mother Mac's, you could stock up on samosas at Marhaba, one of the other remaining low-price curry houses in the city centre, or maybe buy some bread and head towards the canal - there's an entrance on to the towpath on Ducie Street, which is the road bearing left as you reach the ramp leading towards Piccadilly Station. Once on the canal, the geese are very 'people-friendly' - in other words, mind your fingers.
Continuing up the canal, you'll reach steps at Great Ancoats Street. Following crowds towards the ground, my final stop is the Bank Of England pub. It's not just a no-frills pub - it's a no-stitching-at-all pub. The toilets are signposted by a male and female pointing figure silhouette shapes, but the male silhouette says 'women' on it and the female one 'male' - everyone turns the wrong direction the first time, like one of those psychological tests where they write 'blue' on a red-coloured board. Once you've survived this delightful obstacle course, remember, you've still got a football match to watch, and the return leg into town afterwards to negotiate. As is often said of Manchester City, it's the 90 minutes in the middle that ruins the experience.
Between Manchester Piccadilly and Sportcity.
Oldest building in Manchester, with a great seating area for sunny days. Moved brick by brick after the bomb to its present site.
Exchange Square, just beyond the cathedral from Victoria station and next to Urbis.
The greatest cocktails in Manchester - expensive but only quality served. Service is fantastic, a great place with friends, on a pricey 'lash' or with a date. Dark, intimate, and, as I've moved 4000 miles away, occasionally missed, esp the cute bar maid ;)
www.sociorehab.com/
100 High St
Friendly city centre bar, good beers and wine, decent food in the early evening.
Thomas Street, Northern Quarter
Tel: 0161 833 0070
Send your feedback or queries to been.there@guardian.co.uk
Search Been there
Your tips about Manchester