A family-run deli in West Didsbury is serving a special cost of living breakfast menu to help its customers struggling to make their paychecks last.
The Boulevard Deli is a little gem of a cafe tucked away in the middle of a newly built housing estate. Beloved by locals, it’s something of a word-of-mouth spot – as if you don’t happen to wander past (and you probably wouldn’t) the chances are you’d never stumble across it.
Luckily, we walked by this week – and so we’re here to spread the good news about the cosy little spot and its awesome 8am breakfast club, where you can get your fill of brews and barms for under £3.
Running from 8am to 8.59am daily, choices available on the breakfast menu include egg barms, bacon barms and sausage barms, with prices starting from £2.
Other options available on the deal include a steaming hot portion of hash browns for £1.50, a brew or coffee for £2, and a combo deal with tea or coffee and a hash brown for £2.50. You can also add a hash brown to any barm for 50p.
Available for takeaway and eating in, the deal has been designed to help locals struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living crisis continues to drag on.
Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats
It’s symbolic of the welcoming and friendly nature of the family-run deli, which has nothing but five-star reviews on its TripAdvisor page.
One person reviewing the cafe wrote: “Absolutely beautiful cosy place with amazing food and a lovely chilled atmosphere, awesome customer service and luxury feel through and through all whilst being very affordable. Love it here xx”
Another reviewer said: “Excellent cafe, wide range of food and drinks, family run and fantastic atmosphere. I’ll be going more now I know it is there.”
A third wrote: “We called in here yesterday for breakfast. A couple of years since we’ve been as no longer work in Didsbury but was in the area and so happy to see this business is thriving.
“The food is first class, excellent quality. I had scrambled eggs on toast with sausages, my husband had bacon and sausage bap, plus 5 drinks only £22. The staff are lovely. Would love to go back in an evening to try their meals and cocktail menu, highly recommend, wish we lived closer x”
A fourth called it a ‘jewel in the crown’ in their review, as they said: “I absolutely love this place. The food is great! Home made soup is always good. Pizza’s tasty! Everything I’ve ordered has been great! I’ve even been after closing time and the Amazing owner went out of his way to make us something to eat.”
Aside from breakfast dishes, Boulevard Deli also serves up a wide range of salads, alongside burgers, pizzas, light bites, omelettes and hot sandwiches.
Menu highlights include the hot carvery barmcakes with sauteed onions, potatoes and gravy, the minute steak barm and roast pork loin with a choice of apple or stuffing.
Featured image – The Manc Eats
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 -
12th September 2023 
