Manchester Christmas Markets 2016

This post is a little different from me, as it contains no recipes! However after going to the Manchester Christmas markets today, I couldn’t stop raving about it, so thought I’d let everyone know how great it was.

To start, the weather was horrible…a whole lot of rain and icy wind, the day didn’t start off great. From Manchester Piccadilly we walked down towards the Market, and soon saw the wooden shacks representing the Christmas market. The first stall of note I came across was selling beautiful pieces of jewellery, made from miniature flowers! The roses were my favourite, and it was hard to walk away from the stall. 

We passed many fudge and chocolate stalls – one stall was selling Christmas cake fudge, which sounded crazy! To the look of it, it was fruity fudge topped with marzipan. We weren’t feeling like fudge though, so we moved on.

After grabbing a coffee to warm us up, we continued down the street and saw a wide variety of wooden ornaments and plaques, great gift ideas for children. If you didn’t know, I adore anything penguin-related so was on a hunt for the best penguin item I could find. The first option were some adorable garden ornaments, made up of brown stick-like things, which were shaped into a penguin. Very cute, but I don’t have a garden so it wasn’t really suitable. On the same stall however they had the most amazing birdhouses that looked like castles and big houses. They were very cool.

We moved on to find some hot food. The Christmas markets originated in Germany, so it wasn’t surprising that there were many Bratwurst stands. Last year we tried a bratwurst with cheese in the middle – good but the cheese is so hot you can’t taste anything after eating it. This time we went for a standard Bratwurst, perfectly cooked with caramelized onions and mustard. Delicious.

In case you weren't sure what a hotdog looked like...(from Google)

We got around to Exchange Square, where we saw our first mulled wine stall. We both still had a lot of coffee left so avoided the stall for now, but had a spy on the flavours on offer. They included strawberry and amaretto, raspberry liqueur, passionfruit and Cointreau and an apricot and brandy. All spiced with cinnamon and other festive spices.

We then moved on to what would be my favourite stalls of the day. First was a cheese stall, run by the Saddlesworth Cheese Co. Two years ago, my boyfriend and I went to the markets for the first time and came across this stall. They had a cheese called Smelly Ha’peth, a creamy yet full-flavoured blue cheese. We fell in love, and the next year bought a large slab of it. This year we went even further and to my slight surprise, my boyfriend bought half a wheel of it. The cheese can be frozen, which is good as we ended up with over a kilogram of it, and the quality is amazing. If you go to the markets, I’d highly recommend their cheeses. If you’re not a fan of blue cheese, they make and sell other artisan cheeses that are sublime also. Their website is here if you’re interested.

Smelly ha'peth (from the Saddlesworth Co website)

My favourite stall was the next one along. It was all about alpaca fur, from hats and scarves, to rugs with panda designs on, and soft toys. I’ve never felt alpaca fur before, and oh my, it was like touching clouds. To my absolute delight they had made penguins out of the fur! Unbelievably cute and fluffy – I wanted to buy them all!

I was now rather hyper after my penguin delight, and we went to get mulled wine. We went for a large raspberry liqueur mulled wine, and got our 2016 markets mug! It was delicious as expected, and not as sweet as the strawberry and amaretto one we’d tried the year before. So now I was hyper and pretty tipsy as we continued our trip around the market.

2016 large Christmas mug

As we continued our wanderings, we went to a stall selling Schokokuss, German chocolate kisses. The base is biscuit/waffle, and they are filled with a mousse like substance flavoured with all different things – chocolate orange, mint being key examples. They’re covered with a dark chocolate. We went for a bailey’s Schokokuss, and if you like Baileys, you will adore these! They’re not too strong (less strong than Baileys chocolates that can be bought in supermarkets nowadays), but have a lovely Baileys twang. So good, and I would love to work out how to make them.

Schokokuss (image from Google)

We love our sweets, especially ones I struggle to make. We came to an Italian stall, selling cannoli and amoretti biscuits, and a pastry known as sfogliatelle. No, we can’t pronounce it either, and always get weird looks when we try to… These are layers of super crispy pastry, forming a triangle shell with a sweetened ricotta filling. I’ve tried to make them once, and it was a bad day in the kitchen…the pastry has to be rolled out so thin (like filo), and then after rolling the pastry, they have to be filled and sealed, then baked. Somehow the filling doesn’t leak out! It’s something I am determined to work out how to do, and if anyone has any tips, they’d be greatly appreciated.

Sfogliatelle (image from Google)

We wandered the rest of the stalls, and saw some other cool items, one being a cushion with a cute cactus saying how no one would hug it. There was also an amazing stall selling scented coffee beans, which they sold whole or ground! We had a whiff of loads of them, some examples being blueberry muffin, fudge and baileys. Our favourite by far though were the chocolate orange beans – they had such a beautiful aroma of coffee and Terry’s chocolate orange. I bought 100g of the ground beans, and can’t wait to try them!

We ended up in a large square (my Manchester geography is terrible), where there was a huge inflatable Santa on a building. There was also a very impressive assembled two-story beer house, with a reindeer head poking from the second floor. It even sang Christmas songs! In this square we ate lots of freebies including delicious Serrano ham, and other cheeses. The best stall in this section for me was a lovely stall selling all kinds of amber jewelry, which were just so pretty and well priced! From rings to earrings and necklaces, they had so much variety – these would make a gorgeous gift for a loved one!

Santa's here!

This reindeer sings!

Our wanderings were over and we returned to Manchester Piccadilly, full of happiness and satisfaction. We travelled to the markets midday on a Friday, and spent about 3 hours walking around.  We both took a day off work, as we wanted to be relaxed whilst walking around. If you do go, try to avoid evenings and weekend afternoons, unless you don’t mind being surrounded by people. Nevertheless it will be a great day out, and I highly recommend it to everyone!

Hangar Number 4

Address: 4 Crown Street, Warrington, WA1 2AE, UK

Visited: 14^th March 2015, Lunchtime

This is a restaurant my boyfriend and I were excited to visit. From the name, you may guess the theme of Hangar Number 4, but maybe not the extent the restaurant goes to in order to achieve this theme. The restaurant is designed like an aeroplane lounge, with black seating around the edge of the cosy restaurant and cute signs up displaying how you order your food – looking like the safety sheets found on aeroplanes. 
Best of all was a real half-jet at the end of the room!

This is easily the best themed restaurant I have heard of, and walking in, the place had a great ambience, and we were taken straight away to a table.

It is a little odd that I haven't mentioned the kind of food Hangar Number 4 serves yet...it's a burger bar, with different burgers themed around the globe. When we visited, there was a good amount of variety on offer. I particularly liked the fact that they had interesting non-beef burgers. It didn't take us long to decide on our food, and once we had decided we went to the bar to order.

My boyfriend went for a New York Burger – a beef burger with chicken, bacon, cheese and bbq sauce, and I went for the Mumbai, a dish that had only been put on the menu the previous evening. This was a burger containing a tandoori chicken breast, with an onion bhaji, mango chutney and spinach, topped with a cooling raita. We also decided to try out their onion rings.

The cost of the burgers, given their size and quality seemed very reasonable, with both burgers being less than £10.

Next would be one of my few criticisms about the dining experience. We had a very long wait for our food – given that there were only 3-4 other tables with customers, we waited at least half an hour for the burgers to arrive.

However, when they did arrive, they arrived in style. The food was delivered to us in a trolley, like how food is served on an aeroplane. Better yet, the cutlery we had was actually branded by a company who make aeroplanes themselves! The burgers looked incredible, with nicely glazed brioche buns, and were so big that we had to eat them with a knife and fork.

My boyfriend loved his burger – all the meat was cooked excellently, and he particularly enjoyed the onion rings.

 

New Yorker Burger on the left

My mumbai experience was very interesting. The chicken was cooked perfectly, and although I would have liked it a little spicier, I enjoyed it. The onion bhaji was also cooked well, being super crisp (and not very greasy!), with a subtle hit of spicing. So although it was an odd choice for a burger, I would definitely eat it again.

Mumbai Burger

One of the owners of the restaurant actually served us our food, and was very chatty and helpful. It would have been better if the rest of the serving staff could have been a bit more like him, but given the small amount of time the restaurant has been open, I am happy to forgive these small details.

Overall I would rate Hanger Number 4:

Appearance/ambience: 4.5/5 (I was cold...knocking off 0.5 marks)

Service: 4/5

Food: 4/5

Value for money: 5/5