A tip for affordable, consistently good food is Middle Kingdom, just outside Chinatown on Princess Street. It offers the full hot pot experience, where you and your friends order a bunch of ingredients and cook it yourselves at the table. If you get bored with cooking you can stare in awe at the manga-inspired mural covering one wall. Epic.
Voka Gentle return to Manchester with a headline show in YES Basement, bringing new material that pushes their already elastic sound into darker, stranger territory.
From £14.50
Sorry return to Manchester with a new album that finally captures the full strangeness and clarity of a band who’ve spent years ducking easy categorisation.
From £23.25
The Modernist presents a body of acrylic landscapes by Salford-based artist Peter James Houghton, shaped by themes of societal decline, hiraeth and human isolation.
Free entry
English National Opera takes its first ever bow at The Bridgewater Hall with two semi-staged concert performances of a Mozart classic.
From £25.00
Experience Jonathan Demme’s multi-Oscar-winning thriller with iconic score performed live by the Hallé orchestra.
From £34.50
Manchester’s famous musical legacy comes to life in this walking tour around the city, which will take you from the 1960s to the present day.
From £25.00
The Hallé invites audiences to a year of classical masterpieces, world premieres and appearances by some electrifying artists and composers.
From £17
Scranchester’s tours are a highlight of Manchester’s food landscape. To tie in with the upcoming Chinese New Year, host Rob explores Chinatown.
From £80.00
SEESAW is a co-working space, events venue and café.
Long-established Manchester bar and nightclub, Joshua Brooks is just off student hotspot Oxford Road. Open until 4am on the weekends with regular DJ-led club nights.
The apple in Now Wave’s eye, YES boasts four floors of live music and DJs, and offers food via two outlets. It also has a huge outdoor roof terrace!
A budget hotel in central Manchester
This residency restaurant opened in summer 2019, at Locke Hotels’ Whitworth Locke. The first residency comes courtesy of Mexican specialists El Camino.
Peru Perdu has an all-new food and drink menu, with some of the best-looking dishes in the city.
Glass House is the place to go for floral themed workshops, with expert and innovative florists in an idyllic building.
Refined steakhouse with smart, low-lit decor, boasting some of the finest cuts of meat in the city.
Winsome delivers modern British food, cooked beautifully by chef-owner Shaun Moffat and his team.
Beer, cocktails and Asian street food at one of Manchester’s friendliest bars.
Manchester Wine Tours is a relaxed, fun wine tour, full of the city’s best food and drink, led by an effortlessly engaging host.
Hear ye, hear ye. Take some eating-out tips from our wintertime guide to food and drink in Manchester and the North.
This week’s picks move from confrontational electronics and experimental pop to opera and Manchester’s grassroots R&B scene.
Theatre across the North West splits between festive escape and sharp, urgent work exploring politics, power and resistance.
Step away from the usual. Tours and activities that spark curiosity, inspire creativity and offer something refreshingly different.
This season, exhibitions across the North West feel attuned to the world beneath the world – the forces and stories shaping how we see, feel and imagine.
Whether you’re after storybook theatre, museum wanderings or illusion-bending play spaces, there’s plenty to keep curiosity ticking through winter and beyond.
There's no shortage of great films out at the moment, whether you're looking for the latest blockbuster, that hot arthouse flick fresh from Cannes or a cosy classic.
