Manchester’s Deaf Institute is giving out free burgers this weekend– and all you have to do to get your hands on one is buy yourself a pint.
The Grosvenor Street bar is teaming up with The Koffee Pot’s sister brand DD’s for the promotion – with burger chefs taking over the kitchen and slinging out free patties on Friday and Saturday (June 5 & 6).
The offer applies to any beer and any burger, be that a breakfast version or a full-on all-day brioche.
All DD’s patties are ground fresh each morning using 35-day aged Aberdeen Angus and Herefordshire rib-eye steak trim from Littlewoods butchers. They’re also served pink unless requested otherwise.
Choices include classics like the cheeseburger, bacon cheeseburger and ‘blue burger’ – a mix of beef crumbled with Shropshire blue, streaky bacon and veal jus onions.
There’s also a vegan burger, comprised of vegan patty, garlic mayo, heritage tomatoes, lettuce and vegan brioche, and a Reuben which mixes together salt beef, DD”s patty, Swiss cheese, thousand island sauce, pickles and sauerkraut.
Free burgers will be available on a first-come-first-served basis, with 50 up for grabs each day.
A long-standing student favourite with the city’s student community, The Deaf Institute is the sort of place you fall in love with as an undergraduate and still find yourself going to a decade later.
Just as popular with lecturers and PHD students as it is fresh-faced first years, it’s an iconic Manchester spot – lauded for its tasty scran and underground music nights in equal measure.
The purchase stopped the loss of a huge number of jobs and saved staff from being plunged into uncertainty in the middle of the pandemic.
Deaf officially reopened in May after being closed for over a year – so go and show them some support. And get that free DD’s burger down you.
Food & Drink
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 -
2nd June 2021 
