Explore Ancoats Food & Drink Tour

Fascinated by Manchester’s rich history and also love food? The Explore Ancoats Food & Drink Tour is the one for you. Based in and around Ancoats, the world’s first industrial suburb, this walking tour takes you on a culinary journey of the district recently named one of Time Out’s 50 hippest neighbourhoods in the world.

Hear gripping tales of Victorian street gangs, Italian ice cream empires and satanic mills

And that accolade is well-deserved. True to Manchester, it’s a melting pot of cultures and experiences, from an award-winning chip shop (The Hip Hop Chip Shop) to Mana, Manchester’s revered Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant.

The Ancoats Explorer food tour tells the story of how a rural landscape on the outskirts of Manchester, with a scattering of farms and cottages, was transformed into one of the most densely populated industrial landscapes in the world with multi-storey steam-powered mills which were hailed as a marvel of the Late Georgian era. This is your chance to hear gripping tales of Victorian street gangs, Italian ice cream empires and satanic mills, along with many more.

Fascinated by Manchester’s rich history and love food? This is the tour for you

Of course, by the end of the 20th century, the industry had gone, the mills were empty and the area rundown. The reverse of this decline started with the New Islington housing project and the area can now be found on lists of ‘hippest’ neighbourhoods (Ancoats was listed in Time Out’s 50 hippest neighbourhoods in the world). Ancoats is now home to some of the city’s best independent eateries and bars and the Explore Ancoats tour will show you around the best of them, starting off from the Horsfall Gallery. Make sure you come hungry!