15 Best Restaurants in Manchester: Top Dining Spots for Every Taste

Q: What are some must-try cuisines in Manchester’s top restaurants?

Must-try cuisines in Manchester’s top restaurants include British classics at Hawksmoor, Indian delights at Dishoom, Italian favourites at San Carlo, and eclectic dishes at The Refuge. Each offers a unique culinary experience, showcasing Manchester’s diverse food scene.

Q: Which restaurants offer the best dining experience in Manchester?

For the best dining experience in Manchester, visit Hawksmoor for top-notch steaks, Dishoom for flavorful Indian food, San Carlo for elegant Italian cuisine, and The Refuge for its unique ambience and diverse menu. Each offers exceptional service and atmosphere.

Q: Are there vegetarian-friendly options available in Manchester’s top restaurants?

Yes, vegetarian-friendly options are abundant in Manchester’s top restaurants. V Rev Vegan Diner specializes in plant-based comfort food, while Greens offers creative and flavorful vegetarian dishes. Many other top restaurants also provide excellent vegetarian and vegan options.

Q: Do Manchester’ best restaurants require prior reservations?

Prior reservations are recommended at Manchester’s best restaurants, especially for popular spots like Hawksmoor, Dishoom, and San Carlo. While some places may accept walk-ins, booking in advance ensures you secure a table and enjoy a seamless dining experience.

Manchester is a city with a rich history and a lively cultural scene. It’s also a great place for food lovers, offering a wide range of restaurants to suit every taste and budget. Whether you’re looking for fancy dining or a casual meal, Manchester has something for everyone. Listing some of the places to visit in London as well.

Manchester has top-notch fine-dining restaurants if you want to treat yourself to a special meal. Places like The French by Simon Rogan and Adam Reid at The French serve delicious British dishes made with high-quality local ingredients. These restaurants offer not only great food but also a luxurious dining experience, making them perfect for celebrating special occasions.

For a more relaxed meal, Manchester has plenty of cosy bistros and cafes. The Northern Quarter is a trendy area with unique spots like Evelyn’s Cafe Bar and Common. Here, you can enjoy tasty brunches, hearty comfort food, and a relaxed atmosphere. These places are great for casual meals with friends or family.

Manchester also has a fantastic selection of international restaurants. You can enjoy delicious Italian food at San Carlo or Rudy’s Neapolitan Pizza or try spicy Asian dishes at Dishoom or Australasia. With so many options, you can enjoy flavours from around the world without leaving the city.

Manchester’s food scene is diverse and exciting, offering a variety of dining experiences. Whether you’re a local or a visitor, exploring the best restaurants in Manchester is a great way to enjoy the city’s spirit and tasty cuisine with our Europe Tour Packages!

15 Best Restaurants in Manchester

Another Hand
Climat
Tast
10 Tip Lane
Seoul Kimchi
The Sparrows
Refuge
Hispi
The Black Friar
Bundobust
Erst
Higher Ground
Adam Reid at the French
Dishoom
63 Degrees

1. Another Hand

Another Hand is on the Great Northern Warehouse’s ‘hidden street’, Deansgate Mews. To reach it, you’ll need to climb a rainbow-painted staircase from the main road of Deansgate. Once you’ve found the neighbourhood-style restaurant, you’ll be welcomed into its small, cosy space by a convivial team passionate about the food and drink they serve.

And what a treat the small plates here are with local ingredients and punchy flavours. Its hay-roasted hasselback potatoes with black garlic, buttermilk and burnt butter is a dish of dreams, being deliciously crispy after four hours of cooking. As each plate is presented, you’ll hear about the source of the ingredients, such as lion’s mane mushrooms grown in nearby Altrincham and chocolate from award-winning neighbours, Dormouse. It is among the best Restaurants in Manchester.

Must try: Hay Roasted Hasselback Potato

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2. Climat

When you arrive outside Climat, you may question whether it’s open and if you’ve found the right building. Stick with it and take the lift to the eighth floor, though, as the welcome when you step into the restaurant, and the view over Manchester’s rooftops, are worth the effort.

Lead by the team behind Chester’s highly acclaimed Covino, Climat is a wine-led restaurant and, as you look out over the domes of nearby Barton Arcade, you can choose between a small selection of wines by the glass or carafe, or request a more extensive menu of more than 250 bottles. The daily changing food menu is split into snacks and larger plates and is described as “just food you want to eat”.

Start with its signature dill-infused hash browns topped with taramasalata then work your way through interesting larger dishes such as cuttlefish, chorizo and chickpea stew with pickled fennel and jalapeno, or halibut spine, bordelaise and spaghetti squash. It is among the best Restaurants in Manchester.

Must try: Hashbrowns and Taramasalata

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3. Tast

Tast, on well-heeled King Street, has been devised by Catalonian chef Paco Pérez, from Girona’s Michelin-star Restaurant Miramar, with backing from Manchester City royalty Pep Guardiola and Ferran Soriano, who on arriving in the city felt deprived at the absence of their home cuisine.

Basics including charcuterie and croquettes are beyond reproach, and the octopus with potatoes and octopus mayo is stunningly good. A dish of rice with red prawns, baked on a shallow oven dish so that the edges go crisp and chewy, is drizzled with the juices from the prawn heads. It tastes of dark, roasted shells. If you’re after a more casual drink with smaller dishes, called “tastets”, visit its bar and terrace which promises “the bustle of Barcelona in Manchester.”It is among the best Restaurants in Manchester.

Must try: Arros De Calamar

4. 10 Tip Lane

The trio behind 10 Tib Lane – Ben Gretton, Sophie Robson and Joe White have run, worked at and owned some top venues in Manchester. In 2021, they came together to create this laid-back bar and restaurant where you could happily spend an entire evening. There’s an imaginative cocktail menu, a selection of generously sized small plates, and a natural wine list that the owners promise “won’t scare you off”.

Things are done simply but very well here. Interiors are stripped back, think distressed plaster walls, exposed brick and hanging greenery and compact menus change seasonally. A summer plate of confit spiced carrots with aubergine and garlic puree and rose harissa dissolved delightfully and is beautifully colourful, while non-vegetarians will rave about a rich spring dish of lamb sweetbreads with guanciale, potato, chicken and white wine sauce. It is among the best Restaurants in Manchester.

Must try: Confit Spiced Carrots

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5. Seoul Kimchi

This gem in a thoroughly uncommon spot near the Manchester Royal Infirmary offers life-affirming Korean barbecue and hotpots, served bubbling in cauldron-like bowls. If you can find a space, cram in with the visiting students and order the unctuous galbi ribs or the bulgogi pork belly, lovingly braised, deeply aromatic and coupled with squid. The sweet and spicy fried chicken is superb, as are the jeon, chewy fried pancakes scattered generously with seafood.

Must Try: Bulgogi Squid and pork

6. The Sparrows

Situated in Manchester’s Green Quarter, around a five-minute walk from Victoria train station, under some railway arches, it’s worth going to find its winning combination of comforting continental food, paired with pilsner on tap, sake or wine. Be sure to order its house speciality, spätzle, a type of small noodle. Handmade daily, it comes smothered in a sauce of your choice. Have it with sauerkraut topped with pumpkin seeds, or a green salad with a good dose of Alpine salt. Reliably busy, even mid-week, it’s worth booking ahead.

Must Try: Spätzle

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7.Refuge

Refuge, inside the Kimpton Clocktower Hotel, is perhaps one of the best-looking spots to eat in the city centre. But, somehow, it manages to feel cool and informal too. The menu is made up of sharing plates and there’s a feasting menu designed to share with friends. It is among the best Restaurants in Manchester.

The Gochujang-glazed pork belly is a knockout, while vegetarians will devour the harissa-charred cauliflower. Allow enough time before or after a meal to have a cocktail in its twinkling winter garden space too.

Must try: Gochujang glazed Pork Belly

8.Hispi

There are few things more wonderful in life than a good neighbourhood bistro and Hispi is top of the pack in Manchester. Hidden away in the suburb of Didsbury, this is the kind of place you wish you had on your doorstep. Reliable, confident, classic cooking makes this relaxed spot many people’s go-to for special occasions.

Fans of chef Gary Usher’s sterling work at the Sticky Walnut in Chester and Burnt Truffle on the Wirral helped bring Hispi to fruition through a devoted crowdfunding campaign and thank heavens they did. More than just a solid neighbourhood restaurant, with a great-value set menu as well as the seasonal à la carte, it offers duck ham and pickles as enticing nibbles ahead of the mains, and Usher and team find the joy in cuts like the underrated feather blade. It is among the best Restaurants in Manchester.

Must Try: Braised Feather blade

9.The Black Friar

There’s an excellent selection of historic pubs in Manchester’s city centre for all occasions, from the Grade II-listed Briton’s Protection with its selection of more than 300 whiskies and the Castle Hotel in the Northern Quarter with live music and an excellent jukebox, to Ancoats’ Edinburgh Castle for top-quality pub food. Just over the border into Salford, the red-brick Black Friar sits incongruously among high-rise buildings.

Slip inside for a cosy pub meal where classics are done well, such as burgers and pies, and sit next to more imaginative options such as spinach and seitan cannelloni or braised octopus with black-eyed bean, chorizo, feijoada and pimento. For special occasions, book a table in its glass room where you can watch chefs at work in the open kitchen while being cloaked by greenery.

Must Try: Black Friar Daily Pie

10. Bundobust

Gujarati street food is the forte of Bundobust, located in a basement off Piccadilly Gardens. It could not look more modest, but this may be. One of the best restaurants in Manchester. It’s not often you encounter a menu without a single bad element, but this pleasing canteen with its beautiful Victorian atrium, founded by two people from Bradford, achieves just that. It is among the best Restaurants in Manchester.

Devour every scrap of bhel puri, chaat and impossibly crisp okra fries from paper tubs, and wash it down with hefty IPAs from their brewery as well as world-class local ones such as Cloudwater and Track. It’s well-executed and sustainable. Every city should have one. Bundobust Brewery on Oxford Street, where you can eat next to stainless steel brewing tanks under another glass atrium.

Must Try: Bundo Chaat

11. Erst

This meticulously curated space looks like it’s come off the cover of a magazine, and equal attention goes into creating big flavours on the menu. At the heart of Erst’s kitchen, an open-flame grill kicks out dishes that vary according to the season. Think ice-cold oysters, deliciously fatty and crisp pork belly and cured fish with seasonally changing accompaniments. Don’t miss the signature flatbread with beef fat and urfa chilli.

Must Try: Flatbread with Beef Fat and Urfa Chilli

12. Higher Ground

Dream team Joe Otway, Richard Cossins and Daniel Craig Martin have Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, Noma and Where The Light Gets In on their CVs. Higher Ground has sustainability at the heart of its ever-evolving menu. Whole animals from local farms are used across a variety of dishes so you might get pig head terrine and pork belly one month or slow-cooked brisket and T-bone steaks another.

Organically grown fruit and veg from their own Cinderwood Market Garden which also provides for many of the best restaurants in Manchester plays a starring role. Wines are low intervention and tunes are smooth. On top of all that, the service makes you feel like a guest of honour.

Must Try: Marfona Potatoes

13. Adam Reid at the French

Despite its name, there’s a distinctly English twang to Mancunian Adam Reid’s menu and you’ll experience textural and sensory saturation as you make your way through the courses. Now that The Midland hotel which houses it has had a £14 million refurbishment, The French, which had a Michelin star back in the 1970s, is finally in a setting deserving of its reputation. It is among the best Restaurants in Manchester.

Must Try: wines

14. Dishoom

For homey dishes served in the magnificent of the 1920s Grade II-listed Manchester Hall. The cocktails can hold their own, too, with original takes on classic mixes. Expect Indian street food and traditional dishes inspired by the old Irani cafés of Mumbai. Humble, hearty and spicy, this is comfort food at its best. It is among the best Restaurants in Manchester.

Must try: Bacon and Egg Naan

15. 63 Degrees

Even with the variety of new best restaurants in Manchester, old favourites sometimes don’t get as much press as they should. 63 Degrees is one of the most under-appreciated. Smack bang in the busy Northern Quarter, you’ll find a little slice of Paris in the shape of this family-run restaurant. The Moreaus left the glamour of their home city to bring a taste of the French capital to Manchester. This one’s not cheap but there is a five-course tasting menu on a Tuesday for a more affordable rate of 45 GBP.

Must Try: Foie Gras

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are some must-try cuisines in Manchester’s top restaurants?

Which restaurants offer the best dining experience in Manchester?

Are there vegetarian-friendly options available in Manchester’s top restaurants?

Do Manchester’ best restaurants require prior reservations?