Elizabeth Gaskell’s House has been lovingly restored; you can now sit at her desk, see where Charlotte Brontë hid behind the curtains, and have tea in the downstairs café. The Pankhurst Centre is also nearby.
Oak Street Café at Manchester Craft & Design Centre does fresh, healthy salads, soups, sandwiches, quiches and, best of all, cakes.
The Walker Art Gallery is a small but perfectly formed traditional gallery. It houses an impressive collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative art from 13th century to present day.
Rust & Stone is a fresh food café in Spinningfields.
A rustic Kentish Oast House (that’s a traditional hop-drying shed, of course) plunked down amidst the glass and steel corridors of Spinningfields.
Gusto Manchester is a lavish Italian restaurant just off Deansgate, with 1920s décor and an extensive menu.
Beermoth on Manchester’s Tib Street stocks specialist beers, chosen with a quietly confident knowledge.
A discrete – perhaps even a little bit hard to find – bar that celebrates that fizziest of drinks: champagne.
San Carlo Leeds is an Italian restaurant close to the town hall, which focusses on authentic, filling food.
Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen is a meat-free Chinese restaurant in Manchester’s Withington.
The Rochdale Pioneers Museum – once a shop – is widely considered to be the birthplace of the co-operative movement.
ABode Restaurant is a fine dining option in Manchester that often gets forgotten about. This might have something to do with its out of the way location, hidden away on a back street near Piccadilly, but it might also be because its offering is just a little outdated.
