The Northern Roots café menu comes via Mary-Ellen McTague, and nigh-on everything on the menu was grown on site. Self-sufficiency in excelsis.

This Carlisle restaurant is destination dining at its most distinctive – well worth the distance.

At Proloco, the execution is unfussy and almost rustic, but all backed with a deep knowledge of flavours. It turns city-centre casual dining into something noteworthy.

Like the star of the same-named 1958 film, Gigi is not the shy, retiring type. This new Italian restaurant is the new hot spot on the Manchester restaurant scene, taking over from Gusto in a grand Grade II-listed block on Deansgate.

Eat Well MCR’s Eat Well, Do Good raffle now has a headline prize of up to £1,000 to spend eating and drinking out in Manchester, via the local rewards app Shuffle. Other prizes include dinner for two with champagne at Where The Light Gets In, tasting menus at Sampa and tickets to Neighbourhood Weekender 2027. Tickets cost £10 until the raffle closes at the end of October, with all proceeds going to the charity, which has delivered more than 170,000 chef-made meals to people facing food insecurity across Greater Manchester since 2020.

Guess who’s coming to serve dinner? That’ll be Medlock Canteen, last seen over in Deansgate Square, now taking over from Tartuffe’s very excellent residency at Side Street. Big shoes to fill, but this crack team (behind the mighty Madre and Liverpool’s Belzan) should be up to the job.

Gilpin Hotel & Lake House near Windermere has announced its festive programme, starting with wreath-making (3 December) and candle-making (9 December) workshops at the Lake House, each with afternoon tea and mulled wine from £90pp. A three-night Twixmas break with breakfast starts at £1,419 for two sharing. The three-night New Year Escape (30 December to 2 January) costs from £2,680 for two and includes all meals, with dinners at Michelin-starred SOURCE or Gilpin Spice and a black tie dinner on New Year’s Eve.

Stuzzi on Leeds’ Merrion Street has brought back its Sunday roasts, giving British classics an Italian do-over in the restaurant’s family-style sharing format. Four to choose from: roast beef sirloin with a beef shin and ‘nduja croquette, ‘nduja and fennel seed porchetta, roast celeriac with caper, olive and pine nut stuffing, or the doppia carne (both meats under ossobuco gravy). Every roast comes with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and seasonal veg, served on Sundays from 12pm to 6pm.

Sister Ray, the cocktail and vinyl bar near Liverpool’s Wolstenholme Square, is launching its first food menu alongside a new autumn cocktail list. Both menus focus on updated classics, served in a room inspired by European café culture and Lower East Side bars, with records played through a custom-built GNK sound system.

Fairmont Cheshire, The Mere, near Knutsford, has unveiled its Christmas by the Lake programme, with festive afternoon tea in The Orangery (£65pp, 27 November to 31 December, excluding Christmas Day) and Santa Sunday lunches in The Grand Ballroom on 6 and 13 December. Other dates include a Burgundy wine and cheese evening on 19 November (£70), a wreath-making workshop on 26 November (£80) and a festive menu at Gordon Ramsay at The Mere. Christmas Day lunch costs £195 per adult, and the season closes with a £195pp New Year’s Eve gala ball with a champagne reception, dinner and fireworks.

Sexy Fish Manchester is marking Halloween with Scary Fish: Vampire Tide, a gothic, underwater-themed takeover with Don Julio 1942 on 31 October. Costumed characters, live performers and DJs take over the restaurant and bar through the night. A Halloween dessert platter and cocktail menu launches on 26 October, ahead of the main event.

Salford’s Black Friar, the Grade II-listed Victorian pub that reopened in 2021 after more than 15 years derelict, has opened Christmas bookings and is promising its biggest festive makeover yet. Dishes confirmed so far include venison carpaccio with oyster caviar, turkey ballotine and a Christmas pudding knickerbocker glory, with two courses starting at £39. The full menu is on the pub’s website, and early booking is recommended.

Oktoberfest has arrived in Manchester 23 floors up, as Cloud 23, the sky bar inside Beetham Tower’s Manchester Deansgate Hotel, teams up with Munich lager NOAM until 25 October. On offer are limited-edition Oktoberfest cocktails and buckets of ten bottles on ice, with a free pretzel landing alongside every order. NOAM is the best-dressed beer in Bavaria, brewed with Paulaner and poured from a fluted bottle designed with fashion label Acne Studios.

Leeds brewery Northern Monk has been on something of a spree, opening four bars in 18 months – among them a York refectory and Edinburgh craft beer institution The Hanging Bat – while brewing more beer than ever and somehow shrinking its carbon footprint. Its charity arm has also been reborn as the Northern Monk Foundation, dedicated to getting people outdoors, which so far has meant local schoolkids planting trees in the Lake District and catching lambing season on a nearby farm.