Food: 4.5 Service: 5…read moreAmbience: 5 Food was very good and staff were excellent. We tried the calamari, meatballs, scallops, chilli fillet and pork cheeks. Everything was well flavoured and perfectly cooked. The pork cheeks were stand out delicious. There is an extensive wine selection as well. Tried the chocolate cake and basque cheesecake for dessert. My friend enjoyed the chocolate cake. I found the cheesecake delicious but not like the typical Basque style, its was served cold and lacked the soft center that the Basque cheesecake normally has.

A few weeks ago I went to the Tapas/Spanish restaurant Evuna. Evuna have a few restaurants in…read moreManchester - we went to the one in the Northern Quarter. (They also have another one in city centre on Deansgate and also one in Altrincham and one in Knutsford. I like tapas generally. I like going in a group so you get to try a wide range of different things, and some things you may not have ordered yourself. We picked 3 things each from the menu and then all shared. One of my fav things was the Catalan (style) tomatoes with garlic bread. Not that dis-similar to tomato bruschetta you almost always get when you have tapas. Its basically fined chopped up tomatoes and is more of a sauce compared to bruschetta, and various herbs and garlic probably and some nice bread. Very simple but tasted really good. Other things we had was the pork belly, ham croquettes, a cured meat/cheese platter, patatas bravas, calamari and padron peppers. All overall tasted good. Lovely selection of the meats/cheese, croquettes were tasty, nice salty/juice peppers. Calamari actually was just OK if honest, had better. So overall good food and good service so will be going back again.

Oh salut! First time…read moreI walked past this a few weeks ago and saw the enomatic through the window I let out a an actual GASP of excitement. Was pretty excited on the night too, so excited I left my card in the wine machine which made me look like a total amateur. It's much more spacious inside than I had realised, and there are also seats and heaters outside with a great view of the nearby row of traditional pubs with the town hall in the background. I enjoyed trying the various wines (the smallest amount is often £2-3 so you can try a good four wines on a £10 card pre-payment) and could even tell that some of them tasted different, so am basically going to be earning my MW in no time. They also do a few little snacks - my fave baba ghanoush and some rather tasty crisps, although the brown olives tasted too sour for me. Tap water came chilled in a delightful glass bottle. Btw I am not sure there are actually other drinks options here, maybe check that before you go. The staff were efficient and welcoming and I am sure I will be back here. A great companion to hanging ditch and Bakerie in terms of our city's wine bar scene.

I love wine. Big fan. You know how it goes, you open a book one day and you bite the apple and…read morewoooosh, there's no way back. Although I now work for an independent wine merchant in Didsbury and am considered a bit of a fussy geek by my friends, I have longed for a good wine bar in Manchester pretty much since I arrived in town over 6 years ago, well before wine was a big thing for me. A few places have attempted it, half-heartedly for some, but none had so far succeeded. Then came Salut wines, first baby business of a lovely couple who like me love good wine and thought it deserved proper representation in the City Centre. An ambitious project that was, not without hurdles. But tenacity paid off and behold, a superb, clean, warm and welcoming wine bar where odd ins once was. Enomatic machines a-go-go, 32 wines are available by the glass at any point in (opening) time. That's 16 whites and rosés and 16 reds. Thanks to these machines you can enjoy a vast variety of wines, all of which are way above your house plonk from most pubs/bars/restaurant. And that's not all. 3 measures are available: 50ml, 125ml and 175 ml. The first one is my favourite. I can play to my heart's content and try a lot of wine before it's time to call it a day. Most wines are between £1.20 and £5 for a glass but you can also try some of the fancier stuff that would NEVER be available by the glass otherwise. Risk-free. Whilst they do not cater, a range of nibbles and tapas plates are available and it's perfectly suitable for a light lunch or diner. Cheese, cured meats and Mediterranean veggie plates, all made with very good ingredients. Music is top notch, not your average lounge "elevator" type nor your bass-boosted frenzy. Blues, jazz, pop, electro... To sum-up, great atmosphere, best wine selection in town, excellent service. The bottle prices to take away are on the steep side of I'm honest but I'll put that down as the location.

The food here was delicious, the menu unique enough to be interesting, the decor beautiful, and the…read moreservice exceptionally friendly. I shared the chicken toastie and the steak and eggs with my husband and both were amazing.

Fress has been gorgeously redecorated with tiling on both the floors and walls - whatever they…read morespent on it was totally worth it, and the warm lighting illuminates it all perfectly. I started with a Bloody Mary which came with a teeny tiny bottle of Tabasco floating in it - I am def one of those girls who likes miniature stuff so was almost too excited to notice that in any case the spice level was perfectly balanced. We had padron peppers and octopus to start. The octopus was really excellent - tender with a beautiful flavourful sauce. The padron peppers came with some kind of sauce and no cracked sea salt, which was a shame because the traditional way to do padron peppers is wildly popular for a reason - I wouldn't get these again. For mains, bf loved the crispy pork belly with bacon (and refused to let me have any, so let's take his word for it). I had the half chicken which really is a lot of meat - I love the gravy and sugar snaps but the beetroot potato, while a great idea and having a nice flavour, was really too dominated by the beetroot. We had a penicillin cocktail to finish - it's a very tart whisky cocktail though so I wouldn't recommend it for dessert. Overall we really enjoyed our meal here and you should definitely give this attractive restaurant a try. NB while I initially put categories indicating this is more of a brunch/bar place, it is a proper evening restaurant and unless there's something downstairs, there's not much bar space.

I LOVE Ancoats, and I love cutting room square. Whenever I come up to Manchester, 9 times out of 10…read moreI will find myself in ancoats and just walking around and trying the bars and restaurants there. It's amazing. So when it came to a December trip, I knew I wanted to treat myself and go somewhere new and somewhere in Ancoats, and Elnecot popped up on my feed. Ive walked passed this place so many times and never been in and decided to change it. I booked a time and it was in-between lunch and dinner services so they still served lunch and was before the workers finished so it was quiet. Walking in, it was a lovely place. Looks upscale, looks trendy, looks cozy and it really was. The length of the restaurant has floor to ceiling windows sou can still see the beautiful buildings and people walking passed, and they had a curtain light in the window next to me so it added to the ambiance. As it was the festive period, and I wanted to be a bit fancy with a wine, I chose the Mulled wine from the festive specials menu. Then went for the welsh cheeseburger and fries and the chocolate lava cake thingy for desert. The service was nice and super quick, and the food was delicious. The mulled wine, was better than at the Christmas markets and nice and warning and warm. The burger was delicious and chips were epic. Then the desert came and OMG .. I shall let the pictures do all the talking.

Fantastic small plates, extremely attentive service and just generally a great vibe. I loved coming…read morehere, really felt like the perfect slightly decadent treat. I particularly rate the kohlrabi.

I would like to take this moment to record that I got seriously into vermouth and sherry 3 years…read moreago in Madrid, and I totally called this craze. OK fine, my 84 year old dad has been drinking martini rosso (with gin! and no mixer!) nightly since I was born. He is the original and best. So Flok has vermut on tap, which is the most exciting thing you could deliver to me in a bar really, although tbh I was surprised to see it as £4.50 for 50ml, when you can buy an entire bottle of sweet vermouth in ASDA (which yes, I have done). The bar looks nice, although they did that thing where they leave all the walls all unpainted and peeling (or maybe even deliberately create that look) which is somewhat wearing. The stools I due to my large butt and leather skirt found difficult to stay afloat on but generally this place has a good amount of seating, although it's a shame all the really comfortable seats are in giant booths a couple would feel awkward commandeering. They have various cask beers which was pleasantly surprising and means you could bring any combo of friends here and they would find something to drink, although it also means it doesn't have the chilled wine bar vibe as groups of loud men have a viable drinking session here. The sherry menu is pretty good and we found the oloroso very interesting, almost sake-like. The darkest sherry we tried basically tasted exactly like Sunmaid Raisins, but that one note happens to be pretty delicious! The main criticism I would have of this place is the dearth of drinks menus, which was totally bizarre. Mine was borrowed pretty quickly and that was basically a direct loss of revenue for the bar as we gave up trying to figure out what else was available. They also probably need to rethink the size of their serving area/staff as happily this place was busy and the queue shouldn't be 3 deep at somewhere not even making cocktails.

How delighted I was to stumble across this little basement by accident, strolling down Half Moon…read moreStreet just because it had a nice name. And there, opposite the fire escapes, and between the back doors and wheely bins...is Corbieres...a welcoming little rectangle of light luring you in and down its steps. And I really do mean 'luring' - my beau and I had said just 5 minutes ago that we didn't fancy a beer, and yet we soon found ourselves at the bottom of those stairs investigating the various lagers on offer! There wasn't a great selection on tap, certainly no names that I recognised, and the barman didn't seem too enthused about what was on, but I got to try a new Czech lager that I was quite pleased with. And there was a good selection of bottled goodies behind the bar as well. The room is rather small, but the atmosphere of the place is just great: exciting yet understated, the kind of place I could imagine both hipsters and die hard football fans could rub shoulders and neither would snigger at the other. That's my kind of place. The jukebox is wonderful. During our brief visit we were serenaded by a mixture of Happy Mondays, Stone Roses (we are in Manchester after all) and some other classic delights. In fact, one of the quotes on the walls (see photo) claiming to be from Ian Brown himself, is that it "always was, still is, the best jukebox in Manchester." High praise indeed. To sum up, my beau and I both left already plotting our return, this time with friends in tow, to show off the cool bar that we found!

Alison's is a pretty good review of Corbieres, covering all the main points. It definitely…read moredeserves a visit. However, she writes that the bar has managed to keep a low profile and that if you get there early, its all yours. In recent months its popularity has absolutely boomed if that used to be the case, and on Friday and Saturday nights, you've often got little chance of getting in, let alone sitting down, or accessing the Juke Box. The Juke Box is an absolute joke, no doubt, as it claims, it's the best in Manchester. The place is in a cool wine cellar which gives in a unique feel and it has a lizard attached to the bar (great idea). There isn't a focus on wine despite being a wine bar and the clientele are indeed much better than your average Deansgate set. Its genuinely one of the coolest bars around and I think its one everyone should try, so I do advise going, just make it a week night...

Went to The Beeswing with friends the other week and had some great food. There were 5 of us and we…read moretried pretty much every dish. It was made better by being 50% most of the food - Beeswing is one of many restaurants in Manchester which had a 50% off offer. I am sure its done elsewhere but for several years now, every January a lot of restaurants have deals on. Mostly its 50% off food but some also have deals on drinks. Anyway, back to the food. We ordered one of each of the small plates and a few each of the pinchos. We also ordered one of the charcuterie options. I liked pretty much all the dishes. Just personal taste but I was not that keen on the feta/black sesame dish. But everyone else liked it. I think the dish which overall everyone liked the most was the sweet potato dish. We could have done with more food and did try and order some more but it turned out the kitchen was closed. It did close pretty early - I think the restaurant was still open for another 90 minutes so that was unusual. We were told we could not order more food as they were cooking food for a large table. But not that long after, could see them wiping the kitchen surfaces and no more cooking was happening. But overall I would recommend going. Maybe just check when the kitchen closes. The actual restaurant is potentially a bit hard to find. On Google Maps the pin was not that accurate. The pin on Yelp should hopefully be more accurate - I tweaked it recently so hopefully thats updated soon. But to get to restaurant, you can walk down Little David Street (worth doing anyway as its a nice looking street). You are then in the garden. The restaurant is pretty much infront to the right. You need to go up the stairs. (Or you can access the garden area from the East side on Aytoun St (near the loading bay).

We walked over to Erst after a match at the Etihad, and found the restaurant charismatic and…read morecomfortable. The food, the Staff, the establishment was excellent.

Really liked Erst! At the standard of nearby Elnecot but with a individual range of small plates -…read moremy friend adored the courgettes and curds and the mussels, flatbreads and crispy potatoes were great too. I was sad to be too hungover to try the orange wine - but will definitely be back. Disappointed to be one of only two tables occupied on a Saturday lunchtime - Erst deserves to be packed. Service was helpful and friendly, although I think some patrons will be irritated by the fairly slow pacing of the small plates - warn them if you are ravenous!

Having been to a proper middle-upper echelon churrasco in Brazil, I'd say that this restaurant gets…read morethe idea, but is drastically different in execution. Rather than being an opulent, nearly-sombre space for the well-to-do, Bem Brasil is a raucous, packed, house of protein pleasure. Having experienced many an all-you-can-meat restaurant previously, this was my strategy to the evening: - drink only enough water to ensure that I can still swallow - turn down seconds of any meat that's been processed - get seconds and thirds of any beef that appears to still be bleeding - finish up with a single trip to the salad bar to top up on some roughage to ease all that protein down the pipes I think the farofa here pretty much says it all about Bem Brasil: tasty, but has chunky inedible bits that you just have to spit out.

Well worth a visit. It really is all you can eat and the quality is amazing. For £12 per head you…read morecan have the 'salad bar' which includes several meat and fish dishes cooked in the traditional Brazilian way as well as various delicious rices and pastas, and salads. The real thing to do though, is the full BBQ, for £22 per person. They give you a small disk, green on one side and red on the other. If your disk is green side up, every five minutes the waiters, who are specially trained in the cooking style and are called 'passadores', will bring you a different piece of amazing, perfectly cooked meat. The beef selection alone includes fillet steak, sirloin, rump, rib-eye and more. There is also chicken, pork and lamb, as well as barbequed pinapple. They also do superb Caipirinhas and other cocktails. The place itself is a great setting, very spacious and full of character. I certainly can't imagine anyone being disappointed.

Best underground bar in town ! It is really easy to miss if you aren't looking for it however once…read moreyou are inside you feel like you're in another world. Lots of fun stuff to look at and great drinks. Good ambiance too !