Manchester restaurants: 2025’s biggest new openings

Almanac opened in summer 2025 and has early signs of building the same enviable reputation as chef-owner Luke Payne’s nearby success story, The Packhorse. But while the Packhorse is a country pub complete with roaring fires and Sunday roasts, Almanac is a sleek restaurant which takes its style inspiration from classic New York meets New Orleans brasseries and its culinary notes from historical British food writers Mrs Beeton and Elizabeth David.

Chotto Matte brings more high-rise, high-glam energy to Manchester. With stunning city views and swish Nikkei cuisine, it’s a place to see and be seen with instagrammable small plates bedecked with tiny flowers and chic cocktails.

Much-hyped Manchester opening from the Big Mamma Group, Circolo Popolare is Italian dining designed for the Instagram grid. Its big, extravagant dishes look great and if you order wisely, taste pretty good too.

The food element of award-winning Ancoats pub The Edinburgh Castle has had several overhauls in recent years – but it’s retained its place in the Estrella Damm Top 50 Gastropubs throughout. 

The long-anticipated Glossop Market Hall reopened in November 2025 following a £7.3m redevelopment project. The market stalls have been replaced by a light, airy food hall featuring the kind of trend-leading restaurants and cafes you’d normally have to travel into Manchester to find.

With its Tudor-style facade and picturesque setting overlooking Chorlton Green, the Horse & Jockey has always had the potential to be one of Manchester’s most notable pubs. In 2025 (a mere 200 years since it first opened) it could finally be about to secure its place in that list.

Kallos Cafe & Wine Bar has lit up Salford’s dining scene like a thunderbolt from Zeus himself since it opened in March 2025. It already has a host of loyal locals who love both its easy-going Mediterranean brunches and superb coffee as well as its modern Greek meze dining and superb wines.

Italian restaurant, bar and deli Lina Stores opened its first Manchester venue in the same year it celebrated its 80th birthday. The original was a shop in Soho known for its Italian produce. Eight decades later, there are nine Lina Stores in London plus three in Japan, and as of spring 2025, one in Manchester. Better late than never, guys.

Lock 84 is the all-day restaurant and bar inside four-star hotel The Reach, which opened on Ducie Street in summer 2024. With its preference for locally-sourced ingredients and chic, characterful design, it feels more Northern Quarter independent than international hotel chain. In reality it sits somewhere between the two.

Loom & Ladle Bistro is the restaurant in Manchester Marriott Hotel Piccadilly – and a destination in its own right.

Nell’s Media City is another outpost of the ever-expanding home-grown pizza empire. What sets it apart from the other Nell’s is the shuffleboard and karaoke. Of course, it also has everything we love about Nell’s too: pizzas the size of a UFO with a thin and crispy New York-style base; that double down pepperoni topping; ice cream sandwiches that are always a bit too frozen but nevertheless irresistible; and a top selection of beers and margs.

You’ll find Pip on the ground floor of Treehouse Hotel Manchester, decked out in the same tastefully playful theme as the rest of the building. Furniture is mismatched and the restaurant is laid out in a spacious manner whilst still giving off a cosy, homely vibe. 

Fans of hit restaurant 10 Tib Lane will be keen to check out Posie – a new smaller-scale venue from the same team. It’s more cocktail bar than restaurant but with a three-course menu of small plates, you won’t be left to fill up on olives and nuts if you turn up hungry.

Polish bakery Sticky Fingers now has a permanent cafe and shop on Stockport’s Great Underbank, as well as its Market Hall stall. Go for the coffee and walnut pastries, the banoffee danish, the house BLT and loaves of proper sourdough.

Winsome is a relatively new restaurant in Manchester but it already feels like an established part of the city’s dining scene. Perhaps that’s down to its timeless classic cooking or perhaps the pedigree of the team behind it.