The Big Christmas Food Shop: the best independent traders in Manchester

Axons of Didsbury is an independent family business, always happy to go the extra mile for their customers.

The folks at Barbakan have been nose to the grindstone for over 50 years – they were here long before Chorlton became a hip coffee culture destination.

According to Decanter, ‘Manchester is lucky to have Carringtons’ and in the world of wine that counts for a lot. This Chorlton independent bottle shop won Best Regional Wine Shop (North West England) in the 2023 Decanter Retailer Awards.

Chorlton Cheesemongers isn’t just a shop that sells cheese. No, it’s a uniquely-adapted, humidity controlled space which specialises British and Irish cheeses.

You can probably tell from the pun-tastic name that you don’t need to be a serious grape connoisseur to feel at home in Cork of the North Stockport. Like its sibling in Sale, this wine shop and bar displays a refreshing lack of stuffiness and elitism – and actively welcomes those of us who need a little guidance when it comes to choosing a decent tipple.

Cork of the North Sale smudges the line between wine merchant and wine bar even before you’ve had a glass. Chances are, if you nip in just for a drink, you’ll leave with a bottle or two to take home, and vice versa.   

Grape to Grain is a bar and bottle shop in Prestwich specialising in – as the name suggests – wine and beer.

Back in the early 1900s, John Mettrick’s great granddad’s uncle left his job at a butchers in Manchester equipped with just a sausage recipe and a dream. 12o years later and Mettrick’s Butchers is still going strong (and its sausages are as popular as ever).

Out of the Blue manages to making selling fish cool. It’s a lovely shop with sea-inspired abstract paintings, changing window art, boatloads of shimmering, clear-eyed fresh fish and some of the friendliest staff you’ll find.

Platt Fields Market Garden is a muddy bit of the good life in urban Manchester. It’s a fantastic community growing project, ran by Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD). You can taste the fruit (and veg) of their labours in the café and you can also buy fresh produce from their stall.

Reserve Wines was set up by Kate Goodman more than twenty years ago and it’s still going strong. Kate certainly knows her stuff, occasionally presenting BBC Food and Drink as the resident wine expert. But you don’t need a telly license to see the knowledge in action, just hop on a tram to Burton Road.

Salut Wines is a proper wine bar of the sort you don’t see very often in the UK. There are no aspirations to hip bar style and no jumping on the latest trend bandwagon, just excellent wines, many of which are available by the glass thanks to Enomatic wine dispensers. In fact, letting the wine speak for itself is what makes Salut such a cool spot.

Much like Betty’s in Harrogate, a trip to Slattery in Whitefield can be a day out in its own right. This bakery and cake shop has been in business in North Manchester for over fifty years – and now houses a cafe, cookery school, and wedding cake showroom – as well as the shop itself.

Taylors of Sale has been one of the best butchers in Greater Manchester for almost 175 years. You don’t date back to Queen Victoria without doing something right.

The Cheese Hamlet is a family-run independent business that sells all sorts of delicious food and drink, as well as cheese.

The Cheshire Smokehouse is one of the region’s best places for quality food. It’s just not Christmas round our way without the hickory smoked cashews and some smoked salmon from this award-winning farm shop.

The Epicurean Chorlton is a friendly little beer shop. It may be smaller than its sister site in West Didsbury but the fridges are rammed with colourful cans in every hue from independent craft producers all over the UK and further afield.

The Epicurean Heaton Moor is the Stockport outpost of the self-proclaimed ‘Beer People’. They’re right though. The staff here are like friendly walking beer encyclopaedias. They need to be though, because the ever-changing selection at this shop is vast.

The Epicurean West Didsbury is the brand’s original craft beer shop, bringing brightly coloured cans to Burton Road.

Tipples of Manchester is a gin specialist store, with 100 bottles and counting – but, as they say themselves, “you can’t have a spirits shop with only gin now can you?”, so the floor-to-ceiling shelves are also creaking under the weight of 700 spirits, liqueurs, bitters, syrups and more.

Trove Levenshulme has been going strong since 2011. The main draw is its fantastic bread, which forms the basis for its breakfast menu.

Unicorn is a well-loved organic co-operative selling vegan produce. There’s an emphasis on Fairtrade and it does everything it can to source local fruit and vegetables through partnerships with local growers as well as co-operatives on the continent which share its ethos.

If you like eating out in Manchester, chances are you’ve enjoyed some meat from W H Frost Butchers. They supply carnivorous delights to many of the region’s top restaurants and you’ll often see menus boasting Frost’s sausages. Why wouldn’t you? – W H Frost is a mark of quality.