The Blues Kitchen Manchester

We’ve long been fans of Manchester’s Blues Kitchen here at CT HQ. Art deco design features, generous Americana plates and a Northern Soul-heavy soundtrack – what’s not to love? 

It’s also absolutely packed on a Tuesday night, pleasingly. In the bar section, the skilled house band plays a set of 60s and 70s covers, getting a raucous reaction from the lightly-sozzled, well-meaning crowd. 

Further back, all stained-glass and mood lighting, the dining section. It might be a laid-back, drop-in-and-dine type place, but there’s a sense of occasion to it all, nothing half-hearted. 

It’d be easy for a place like this to play it safe, but the Blues Kitchen menu offers up a few surprises that often outshine the usual good ol’ boy grub. 

Case in point: the tuna tostada, which seems oddly unsuited for the setting, but delivers the goods and then some. The chopped tuna chunks are sashimi-grade, and taste it. But it’s the Korean hot sauce and light sprinkle of furikake that transform a fine dish into a great one. 

Another jalapeno-associated dish, the baked sweet potato, probably won’t stay on the menu long – things move fast down at The Kitchen’s kitchen – but should. It’s hotter than most, thanks to those chillis, balanced with the creamy, zingy feta, while the flesh of the yam is soft, comforting and nigh-on creamy. 

But if you’re heading to The Blues Kitchen, you’ve more than likely got meat on the brain. Smokey, Southern-style, barbecued meat. And that’s where the pork belly ribs come out to play. 

They’re exactly what you expect when you think of a Deep South grill: imposing slabs with caramelised edges, tumbling apart into hot, porky shreds. They’re grand in their own right, but dipped into the peach tea BBQ sauce, it becomes something altogether more intoxicating.

It’s not all zingers. The side salad is a bit underwhelming – leaves, dressing and chives, nothing more, nothing less. And the fries are just fries, which isn’t a crime, but some super-powered alternatives would be nice. 

The Oreo donuts are a solid place to end things. Soft and bouncy, with a layer of that Oreo crumb in the middle, ripe for dipping into a well-made toffee sauce. 

On food alone, The Blues Kitchen is one of Manchester’s better casual dining spaces. When you add in the live music, the weekend-on-a-midweek-night vibe, and the friendly, freewheelin’ staff, it becomes one of the best options, full stop. Or ‘period’ as our transatlantic cousins wrongly say.