A Chinese restaurant in Manchester has just been crowned the city’s best for the third year running.
One Plus in Manchester city centre revealed on Wednesday that it had taken home the gong for the Best Chinese Restaurant in Manhester at the Restaurant Guru awards for the third year in a row.
Sharing a picture of its award on social media, the restaurant wrote: “Thanks for this award. That’s 3 on the bounce taking this award for 2020, 2021 and now 2022.”
Commenting on having completed an award-winning hattrick in the ever-challenging post-Covid restaurant climate, the team continued, adding: “It’s not been easy and I don’t see it getting any easier but it’s nice to be recognised again.”
Image: One Plus
Image: One Plus
The Charles Street restaurant has won numerous awards since opening in the city in 2018, first drawing people in with the opportunity to cook their own hot pot dishes from a conveyor belt of different options.
Today, people go just as much for its excellent hot pot as they do for One Plus’s hand-stretched noodles, Chinese BBQ and rice dishes.
Split across three levels, the restaurant offers something different from other Chinese eateries in Manchester with a rice and noodle bar in its basement, authentic Chinese BBQ and an a la carte seafood menu on the first floor, and Chinese hot pot on the ground floor.
As part of the Chinese BBQ experience, diners can keep their food hot or charred towards their preference via their own personal coal pit on their table.
Elsewhere, the hot pot dining experience offers individual broths with food delivered from a ‘sushi style’ conveyor belt, so whatever catches your eyes, pop this into your tasty broth and eat when ready.
To find out more and book a table at One Plus, visit the restaurant’s website here.
Feature image – One Plus
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 -
6th October 2022 
