There’s a restaurant in Manchester serving a ‘Chinese kebab’ stuffed with salt and pepper chips and chicken, and it sounds like the best thing ever.
The latest offering from local foodie success story Salt & Pepper, these mouthwatering kebabs see the team stuffing freshly baked pitta bread with their signature salt and pepper fillings.
Choices include lightly battered salt and pepper chicken, tofu, calamari, and prawns, with the restaurant’s famous salt and pepper fries also available to be included INSIDE the wrap on request.
Topped off with additional slices of house-pickled cucumber, fresh chilli and a generous sprinkling of sesame seeds, it is a must-try for anyone who loves their street food.
Image: Salt and Pepper
Image: Salt and Pepper
According to the team, the bread is baked close by in Manchester and can be filled with any of its salt and pepper flavours – meaning, if you really want to go all out, you could also request one stuffed with their spicy hash browns for the ultimate naughty carb fest.
Available seven days a week at the Northern Quarter eatery, which describes itself as ‘a merging of the east and west’, the kebabs have already become a huge hit with customers since their launch at the end of 2022.
Of course, it’s not the only tempting thing on offer – with long-time favourites such as Salt & Pepper’s loaded fries and sticky toppings also continuing to be as popular as ever.
Image: Salt & Pepper
Image: Salt & Pepper
Add to that a whopping ten sauces, including a hot house made curry sauce that has been in the owner’s family ever since their grandad opened his own Chinese takeaway in the 1960s, and it’s easy to see why Salt & Pepper continues to be one of the Northern Quarter’s most popular eateries.
The modern Chinese street food stall-turned restaurant, which specialises in everything salt and pepper, regularly draws huge queues at lunchtime.
First opened in 2019 inside the Arndale Market, the team opened its first restaurant on High Street in the Northern Quarter last year after being forced to relocate due to a lack of extraction in the shopping centre.
It’s now housed across the road in a large glass-fronted building with casual seating, open from 12-8pm daily.
Featured image – Salt & Pepper
Eats
Lively Irish pub Nancy Spains set to open in Manchester for the first time
Daisy Jackson
An Irish bar famed for its live music is heading up to Manchester for the first time, and is promising £2.50 pints to lure us in.
Nancy Spains will be venturing out of London for the first time promising to bring the ‘ultimate traditional Irish pub experience’ to the Northern Quarter.
If you were to ask what the hottest trend in hospitality is right now the answer would, apparently, be Guinness. We’re drowning in the stuff.
This latest opening is more about Murphy’s, another Irish stout, than Guinness (they actually won’t serve Guinness at all) but the craic will be much the same.
Nancy Spains is actually set to open almost directly opposite the aforementioned Salmon of Knowledge, taking over the former Corner Boy unit on Stevenson Square in the heart of Manchester.
To celebrate its opening, the pub will be serving its first 5000 pints of Murphy’s for just £2.50, so that it can show off the atmosphere that’s established it as ‘one of London’s favourite pubs’.
They’re promising an array of Irish whiskeys behind the bar, live music performances, and a lively late-night setting.
Nancy Spains was set up by three brothers who travelled all over their home county of rural Kerry researching Irish pubs, before launching two venues down in London.
They want it to balance a traditional pub with the vibrancy of the city.
Peter O’Halloran, co-founder of Nancy Spains commented, “We’re so excited to be launching in Manchester, bringing Nancy Spains to the heart of the Northern Quarter.
“After the success of our two venues in London, it was only right to bring Nancy Spains’ infectious spirit and Irish pride to Manchester. Slainte!”
Nancy Spains will open its first Manchester pub on Saturday 15 March at 21 Hilton Street.
Lucky Mama’s – The Italian restaurant serving pasta in a dough bowl and ‘pregnant’ pizzas
Daisy Jackson
Lucky Mama’s is a local sensation, thanks to its slightly whacky but delicious Italian creations like pasta served in a bowl made of pizza dough and its latest offering, a ‘pregnant’ pizza.
What on Earth is a pregnant pizza, you ask? Firstly we should stress this is a nickname we’ve bestowed upon the dish, rather than Lucky Mama’s chosen branding.
But essentially it’s a helping of fresh pasta that’s folded into the bubble crust of the pizza, like a half-calzone.
Lucky Mama’s started life when founders Mamadou Dhiam and Gaby Santos set up a trailer in their backyard in Eccles in the depths of lockdown.
But thanks to a formidably loyal following that’s spread the word of Lucky Mama’s far and wide, it now has two pretty pink restaurants in Greater Manchester.
Back in 2022, they threw open the doors to their Chorlton restaurant, before returning back to home turf for spot number two in Monton in 2024.
The recipes are fresh and pretty authentically Italian up until the last step, when they throw a curveball by loading their pasta into unconventional vessels.
‘Pregnant’ pizzas at Lucky Mama’sTraditional Roman pizzasLucky Mama’s pink restaurant in Chorlton
Their pasta pizza bowls are what they’re best known for and they fly out of the kitchen – this is where pizza dough is placed around a metal bowl before being baked in an oven.
Then it’s piled high with freshly made pasta, with popular flavours like cacio e pepe, mushroom alfredo, and rasta pasta.
Pasta is available in a regular ceramic bowl too.
You’ll find Lucky Mama’s at 565 Barlow Moor Road in Chorlton; and 217 Monton Road in Eccles.
Georgina Pellant -
11th April 2023 
