A meal full of marvellous moments that you’ll be talking about for months afterwards.

My word, Dahlia Stereo sounds good. Literally. An obscene number of man-hours have gone into making this new Northern Quarter bar-restaurant an audiophile’s dream.

Balance Taroom is a genteel space, full of millennials keen to sup interesting booze away from all that city centre frenzy. And if that floats your boat, this is the best of the small-scale batch.

They could do with fixing the soundtrack, but, regardless, Schofield’s Bar is one of the good ones. If Manchester’s going to earn (or maintain) a reputation as a world-class city, it needs bars like this.

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.

Liverpool Cocktail Week returns for its fourth year from 9 to 18 October, with more than 50 bars and restaurants pouring signature cocktails for £5 to £7 to anyone wearing the official wristband. Heavy hitters like Black Cat Club and The Alchemist sit alongside a crop of independents, while Royal Albert Dock adds 11 dockside venues to the crawl, with wristbands available to collect from Gusto. Wristbands start at £12.95 (£7.95 a head for groups of four or more), which should pay for itself well before closing time.

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.

Eat Well, Do Good returns to Manchester this October for its third year, with the city’s hospitality trade once again fundraising for chef-made meals for people in crisis – families in temporary accommodation, women in refuge, food bank users, and parents staying overnight in hospital with their children.

Vetch has shifted from its tasting menu format this September in favour of an unstructured, order-as-you-go menu built for sharing, from chef-owner Dan McGeorge. Dishes span oysters with green strawberry and yuzu hot sauce, buffalo wing with caviar, salt-aged duck with blackberry kosho and a 600g T-bone, alongside a reworked drinks list and looser, faster-paced service.

McGeorge won Great British Menu in 2021 and Vetch holds two AA rosettes, a Good Food Guide “Very Good” rating and a Michelin Guide listing for 2025 and 2026.

Northern Roots finally has an opening date. The Big Welcome, a free family launch event, runs Saturday 19 September, 12-4pm, marking the first public opening of the Welcome Building, café, shop and the four-acre Snipe Clough Urban Farm.

Albert’s Schloss brings Oktoberfest back to Manchester from 19 September to 25 October 2026, with all six official Munich Oktoberfest beers on tap – a rarity outside the city itself. Expect seven days a week of oompah and brass bands, a keg-tapping opening ceremony, bratwurst-eating and lederhosen competitions, and Bavarian food to match. The Liverpool branch runs the same festival in parallel, for anyone wanting das benches without the trip east.

Zouk Tea Bar is launching a new run of regional Indian cooking classes this autumn, covering Mumbai (10 October), Old Delhi (28 November) and Lahore to Lucknow (12 December), each hands-on and covering street food, regional curries and kebabs. The December class carries a festive twist, teaching a raan-inspired roast chicken with spicy Indian gravy for Christmas. A press preview session, with two dishes from each class, runs Saturday 19 September, with limited spaces available.