11 Top Nightspots in Manchester

I'm an opinionated bastard when it comes to nightlife in my home city. I've made my opinions very clear about the places I don't like and won't go to and I've listed the places I'm planning to go to. So what are the places I recommend the most so far? Where might you see me on a Saturday night? And where might you enjoy if you've like my last few posts? (It's worth pointing out in advance that there are a lot of good looking women in all of these places, that being a factor in them making the cut.)

There's no particular order to this list, and the quality of a venue always has a subjective element. These are the places I've enjoyed, and the places you might see listed on Manchester Social Group in the next few months.

Bijou

A small, smart venue near Manchester Cathedral. Great back bar. If you like your whiskies, try their Aberlour A'bunadh. You'll spot the odd celeb here and there- it's a choice place for big-name birthday parties.

Australasia

Great underground bar (as in it's literally underneath Deansgate) next to John Rylands. Good chilled house music being played from the iconic touchscreen glass DJ booth. Look out for High West whiskey behind the bar. Don't turn up in a group of more than 3 men- you won't get in. Friendly clientele.

The Alchemist

There are two branches of this cocktail bar in Manchester- one in Spinningfields and one hidden away on New York St behind Piccadilly Gardens. Their unique cocktails- some concocted over a bunsen burner- are to die for and the décor is an unforgettable blend of rustic and chic modern.

The Lawn Club

An L-shaped bar in the heart of Spinningfields, The Lawn Club first struck me as a country clubhouse with its racket-adorned walls and full-length windows. The wicker seats inside contribute to the summery feel of the bar. Summer is the best season to visit: for a small charge you can rent out a deck chair and sit with your Pimms on the lawn. In winter, the grass space is converted into an ice rink, and the club's menu changes to suitably warm the cockles after a skate. The real log burner has a similarly pleasant effect.

Artisan

A smart, apartment-like bar in The Avenue. If you can get there early, bag yourself a couch next to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Spinningfields. Plush and homely (if your home is full of nubile tipsy young women).

Tattu

Superb Chinese restaurant in Spinningfields. Incredible nautical themed building, including fixtures wrapped in thick rope and huge ship's wheel-style door handle at the entrance. Try to get seated near the huge dried blossom tree for the best experience. For the quality you're getting, the price of food is fair.

Sakana

I've only experienced the bar area of this pan-Asian restaurant on Peter st. It's quite a small roadside section to the establishment, but it's nicely designed with polite staff and a good drinks range, all to a chilled house soundtrack.

LIV

Manchester's premier celebrity haunt, LIV frequently hosts birthday parties for soap stars and pop princesses. You'll spot them by following the sparkler-clad champagne bottles (normally a crateful) as the staff make their way from the bar to the celeb's table. Recent patrons: Dean Gaffney (Robbie in Eastenders), Leigh-Ann Pinnock from pop group Little Mix, Ricky Hatton, Will I Am and, erm, Leigh Darby from Babestation. (Pic.)

A friendly atmos and not as pretentious as you might imagine.

The Albert Hall

The Twitter feed describes the venue as “a forgotten Wesleyan chapel”, but the building itself is hard to forget- the lower floor of the building played home to nightclub Brannigans until 2011. (This has recently been reopened as Albert's Schloss, and I have yet to check it out.) The club occupies the church, one floor above the street. The set piece of the huge organ, the DJ booth positioned directly in front of it, the lights, the exposed 1910 brickwork and the sheer size of the building make a night in The Albert Hall a unique one. The club's lineup features a mix of rock bands and house music DJs. James Morrison, The Kooks, Danny Tenaglia, Mike Pickering, Belinda Carlisle and Franz Ferdinand are among the names to have graced the stage.

The Milton Club

A small and welcoming members bar on Deansgate, professionally ran with exquisite décor and friendly staff. Their monthly Soul Purpose event has seen many big names grace the club, from DJ Dimitri from Paris to Caron Wheeler from SoulIISoul, and at other times celebs like boxing great Chris Eubank and the cast of Real Housewives of Cheshire have dropped in for a drink.

Suede

A plush small venue on Longworth St behind Deansgate. Intimate and smart, Suede occupies the unit that once was Ampersand, a private members bar created by Carrol Design, who also brought us the fine interiors of The Milton Club and Panacea. The club still holds up well, and the music at their Saturday Kinky Lips event conjures great memories (if you're old enough) of the nightlife scene in the early 2000s with its old-skool garage and house mixes.

Have you been to any of these? Do you agree / disagree? If you agree on most of these, what might you have included? Which of these is your favourite? Drop me a comment...

Manchester Hit List

There's a few places in Manchester that I've wanted to check out for some time. A while back I wrote a list of bars, a list of clubs and a list of restaurants that I liked the look of, and I added to these as the weeks went on. Then my phone broke and I lost it all. I've had a go at rewriting from memory. Here's a few names of places that you might see on the Manchester Social Group events feed in the near future, as I'll be organising nights to most of these. Most of these are the smarter-end places, so if that's your thing, keep your eye on the meetup group. I've linked to the venues' Twitter accounts, as these will give a better indication of the kind of night we'll be enjoying. Join up if you want to be part!

Bars

Washhouse

Cloud23

Opus One

The Living Room

Dusk til Pawn

Manchester House

Cinnabar

The Fitzgerald

Clubs

Playhouse at Panacea (the club's Friday night party event)

Restaurants

The Kitchens

Al Bacio (I've still got a voucher for this after I ditched the girl I was going to take. She typically turned out to be a nutter.)

Fazenda

Handmade Burger Co

Turtle Bay

Comment and tell me which of these you'd want to check out first.

Prospective Mondays

Tomorrow: Singer / songwriter Elvis Costello will be signing copies of his new book Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink. Meet him in WHSmith in Manchester Arndale from 12:30pm.

Manchester Social Group now offers a general monthly meetup so members can meet and get to know each other in the smart but reasonably-priced Slug and Lettuce at Albert Square. It's this Friday.

If you're a fan of James Bay, Years and Years or Wolf Alice, join Party People Manchester for a trip to Victoria Warehouse in Trafford. Tickets for Saturday night are a measly £5.

Saturday is also Halloween, a prime opportunity to dress like a twat / slut / offensive bastard. Which is all great in my book. If you want to do that with others and you're at a loose end, Manchester Socialising is going to Funkedemia, 20s and 30s are going out, and Manchester Social Scene are going to a Halloween Ball Pool Disco at the Museum of Science and Industry. Radical. The latter event is officially full, and the Eventbrite page says they've sold out, but these things sometimes change.

Round off your week with Manchester Social Group and a comedy murder mystery dinner in Salford on Sunday night. 

Your event here? Tweet me!

Skinny Beef Lasagne

Rumack: What was it we had for dinner tonight?

Elaine Dickinson: Well, we had a choice of steak or fish.

Rumack: Yes, yes, I remember, I had lasagna.

-Dr Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) discusses his dietary decisions in Aiplaine! (1980).

This week I cooked Skinny Beef Lasagne, from the Hairy Dieters cookbook, for a bring-and-share in work. The writers cut down the recipe's calorie count by replacing pasta strips with layers of boiled leek. We were to use the inside sections of the leek, and to get at these layers the recipe asks to cut the leek length-ways from the top to the middle and split it open. I may have cut these a bit too far, meaning that the remainder of the leek (used further on in the recipe) wasn't substantial, but it was all fairly straightforward otherwise.

I thought it tasted great, and people in work seemed to like it. Not many people ate it in work though, and unlike the last 2 times I've brought food in I got no marriage proposals. There was a LOT of food on offer though.

 

Why have I not used a book stand when cooking before? It was a great help.

Reading and Planking: The Long Haul Take 2. Review!

I've just spent a ridiculous three and a half months reading Skagboys, by Irvine Welsh. It was the biggest book in my to-read pile, and so I decided to read it in plank position, holding the body straight whilst resting on toes and forearms.

I mentioned here that I was going to attempt to read it in 2 months. Well, that was a fail. What was not a fail was the attempt to beat my planking record of 4:02.

I started on 27th June, getting 2:05. On 5^th October, when I was close to the novel's closing pages, I managed to get it up to 4:40. Not a huge improvement, but an improvement nonetheless. I finished on 13^th October. I was mixing in a ton of boxing and gym sessions, so I didn't always have the strength to endure planking afterwards. When planking I found it a little hard to follow the plot, but each individual chapter was fascinating in its own way. Sometimes third person, sometimes first from a selection of the main characters, the narrative weaves seamlessly through Edinburgh's seedy 80's underbelly.

The prequel to Trainspotting, Skagboys follows the lives of Renton, Begbie, Spud and Sick Boy as they slip into petty crime, addiction, poverty, violence and depression. Each character is bold and different enough to show a unique insight into their shared world, letting you (if you've already read Trainspotting) see what molded them into the misfits they are in the original novel.

Welsh marvelously handles the task of bringing intelligent literature to his audience through various narrators, some of whom aren't particularly eloquent. But you never get the feeling Welsh is putting his “writer voice” into his weaker characters- he understands their limitations and presents them accordingly, but draws out your empathy- even, dare I say it, from the psychotic Begbie. You get to see what makes him the tyrant he is (and continues to be through the two sequels).

Sometimes the plot lost me, largely because it's hard to concentrate when you've been in plank for the last few minutes. But it was also because the events are less a plot and more a series of events that lead toward a conclusion- from the group's introduction to heroin, through to the supplier's sacking and subsequent skag-drought, towards the protagonists' increasingly desperate decisions. Once I'd finished the book I checked Wikipedia for the plot synopsis. It was only then I put together the scenes and saw how everything loosely edges towards the final outcomes. It also reminded me of some of the hilarious, awkward and frequently brutal depictions that appear right from the get-go.

Regardless, the narrative is gripping and the language fantastic. Fans of Welsh's work will not be disappointed.

The exercise is still a great way of staying in shape and enjoying good literature. Don't say you don't have time for books!

Meeting Nigella Lawson

Celebrity chef / fine lady Nigella Lawson dropped into Waterstones Deansgate last night to sign copies of her new book, Simply Nigella.

I arrived an hour early and there was already a queue, which became so long that we were required to snake the line along the contours of the bookshelves in order to fit everyone into the store. Due to time restrictions, we could get our photos taken but we couldn't pose for the camera like in most signings.

Busiest in-store signing I've seen in Waterstones. Nigella seemed nice. Just as stunning up close. Not doing too bad for 55.

Sparknotes: 1984

Around the side of Manchester's Arndale Centre, on the edge of the Northrn Quarter, there's a little second-hand bookstore that I have a tendency to drop into once in a while. I've found a few gems in there over the last few months, including a biography of Bram Stoker and a few William Burroughs books. One of the smallest books caught my eye though- Sparknotes' guide to George Orwell's 1984.

I read 1984 maybe a decade ago, and it unnerved me to say the least. I keep this blog largely because I forget everything, so the idea of a future in which written records are banned and government documents are rewritten to suit their needs, well, it's not one I'd want to live in. Whether we do live in a world like that is another issue altogether, and not for this blog post. I could tell, though, that there were subtexts I wasn't grasping properly- parts of it were beyond me.

It's nice, then, that years later I find something that concisely explains what happens in the book, including hidden meanings, and reminds me of its brilliance.

There are a number of publishers creating guide books to novels and plays: Sparknotes, York Notes, Letts Notes and Cliff's Notes. I think Letts is still the best. York and Sparknotes are on par with each other (very helpful), but I found Cliff's dived into the text too soon without enough background info.

Being from a second hand shop, the Sparknotes book was a bargain.