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.
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
Celebrating with the kids this Christmas? This family concert is hard to beat, with two festive classics unfolding on the (very) big screen.
From £18.50
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
Experience Jonathan Demme’s multi-Oscar-winning thriller with iconic score performed live by the Hallé orchestra.
From £34.50
Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall will be once again putting on their annual New Year’s Eve celebration. The theme this year? Love is in the Air.
From £40.00
The Hallé invites audiences to a year of classical masterpieces, world premieres and appearances by some electrifying artists and composers.
From £17
The Hallé turns back the clock to the roaring twenties with Gatsby and the Jazz Age, with conductor Guy Barker steering a starry line-up.
From £28.00
The Hallé has a bumper Christmas season in store, decking the (Bridgewater) hall with festive pop, cinematic magic and roaring-twenties glamour.
From £18.50
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.
Whether you’re after storybook theatre, museum wanderings or illusion-bending play spaces, there’s plenty to keep curiosity ticking through winter and beyond.
Step away from the usual. Tours and activities that spark curiosity, inspire creativity and offer something refreshingly different.
Winter brings a huge haul of seasonal shows, as well as productions that resolutely veer away from the fairy lights.
Manchester’s closing out the year – and looking to the new one – with a run of gigs from some of the country’s best underground exports.
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.
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.
Hear ye, hear ye. Take some eating-out tips from our wintertime guide to food and drink in Manchester and the North.
