Manchester’s massive street food venue Hatch has been given a dose of 80s nostalgia in time for Christmas, with traders launching a whole raft of festive specials.
The huge Oxford Road hub of street food and independent retail has been kitted out with fluorescent lights and disco baubles for the festive season.
Hatch has said it wants to ‘transport customers back to a different era when iPhones and ‘furlough’ were yet to enter our mainstream vocabulary’, which sounds good to us.
As well as retro events, there’ll be festive food and drink from its many traders to dig into too.
Pigs in blanket parmos from Parmogeddon at Hatch. Credit: Jody Hartley
Seasonal specials will include a pigs in blanket parmo from Parmogeddon, topping a classic chicken parmo with pigs in blankets and deep-fried stuffing.
The duo will also put their spin on the Christmas sandwich, with bacon, melted brie and cranberry sauce loaded onto a parmo and served in a toasted brioche bun.
Vegan street food legends Herbivorous have created plant-based festive alternatives like a sage and onion seitan roast served in brioche bun with braised cabbage and red onion gravy, and a ‘turkey’ and stuffing burger.
Grandad’s Sausages will be on hand with their take on traditional German bratwursts, while Biscuit and Brew have created festive cookie dough pies with spiced ice creams.
Festive desserts from Biscuit & Brew. Credit: Jody Hartley
Then Sicilian street food experts T’arricrii have created a menu of specialty arancinos with fillings like bolognese sauce and ham and cheese.
There are – naturally – plenty of winter tipples to work your way through at Hatch too, like Kir Royales (made with O’Donnell’s berry moonshine and prosecco), Christmas Manhattans, and Clementine Cosmopolitans.
Hatch bar Miami Ice have created festive espresso martinis – expect flavours like Black Forest, gingerbread, Terry’s Chocolate Orange and Biscoff.
A Biscoff espresso martini. Credit: Jody Hartley
Hatch has also opened its own hot drinks bar, which will serve mulled wines, hot cider and hot buttered rums, which can be grabbed from the Oxford Road entrance for takeaway too.
Craft beer bar ÖL, one of Hatch’s very first traders, will be supplying a number of Christmas themed beers.
The festive specials are all available now right through until the end of the year.
Events over the festive season will include Christmas Carols, 80s discos, and live music.
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.
Daisy Jackson -
23rd November 2021 
