A group of restaurants in Manchester has launched its festive food offering – featuring gravity-defying Christmas food.
The Botanist – which has sites on Deansgate, at MediaCityUK, and in Didsbury – will be serving a festive twist on its popular hanging kebabs this year.
The Christmas skewers will feature orange glazed turkey with all the trimmings, The Hoot reports.
There’s also now an option to turn it into a sharing kebab that includes a chicken, a crispy halloumi and a lamb kofta kebab on a triple-skewer rack.
Served with properly seasoned fries, coleslaw, hummus and flatbread, it’s the perfect option for three diners to tuck into.
Image: Supplied
Another delicious new addition is the turkey and camembert burger with maple glazed bacon and cranberry sauce. The best bit? It comes with a giant pig in blanket sat right on top of it.
There’s also a great selection of new starters and side dishes on the menu, including straight up bowls of pigs in blankets glazed with orange and cranberry, a sharing baked truffle camembert fondue and a three-cheese baked mac ‘n’ cheese.
Image: Supplied
Can’t decide between all these festive goodies? Don’t worry because you don’t have to. The Botanist’s hot sharing board now comes with tater tot poutine, turkey koftas, Cumberland scotch egg, mussels in fragrant curry sauce and mac ‘n’ cheese.
The vegan option includes bang bang cauliflower, superfood salad, sweet potato houmous, crispy porcini gnocchi with truffle mustard mayo and roasted tomato soup. It’s the perfect food to nibble on whilst enjoying a few festive drinks between friends.
Image: Supplied
The sweet toothed out there can tuck into The Botanist’s signature warm cookie dough dessert that has had a seasonal makeover and now comes with After Eights or Celebrations.
Speaking bout the launch of the new seasonal dishes, James Scott, Executive Chef at The Botanist said: “This time of year is all about celebration and enjoying good food with loved ones and that feels even more so the case this winter after our get-togethers have been restricted for the past couple of Christmases.
Image: Supplied
“With this menu we wanted to showcase a modern take on comfort food with festive flavours that taste luxurious and indulgent, offering our diners a seasonal update to the signature dishes they’ve come to know and love when visiting our restaurants.”
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.
Clementine Hall -
19th November 2022 
