Manchester has plenty to answer for. The city gave birth to some of the world’s most influential bands, and most successful football teams, and now it’s offering up a food scene to match its musical and sporting halls of fame.

There’s a bona fide buzz about the place on weeknights as well as weekends, making it a lively city to visit at any time of year.

We’ve brought together our pick of the best places to eat in the city, including a long tasting menu, a corner shop bakery and a natural wine bar on the water.

Mana

The restaurant that changed everything. Simon Martin trained at Noma in Copenhagen before opening in Ancoats and winning Manchester its first Michelin star in more than forty years. The tasting menu runs to twelve or sixteen courses, built on British produce, foraged ingredients and Nordic technique, served in a spare room where every table looks into the kitchen. Still the city’s benchmark.

Skof

Manchester’s second star, and its most exciting recent opening. Tom Barnes, a Simon Rogan protégé and former head chef at three star L’Enclume, has taken over the Hanover building in NOMA, a 1904 drapery warehouse, and filled it with cooking that is precise, generous and distinctly Mancunian in outlook. Look for the Manchester honey ice cream and the tiramisu named for his late father.

Where The Light Gets In

Worth the short trip to Stockport, and one of the most uncompromising restaurants in the country. Sam Buckley works from the top floor of an old coffee warehouse with no menu at all: you eat what the farms and foragers sent in that morning. Hyperlocal, close to zero waste, and utterly its own thing. Walk ins are possible at the kitchen counter for low intervention wine and snacks.

Higher Ground

The city centre restaurant that best captures how Manchester eats now: seasonal British produce, a short menu that changes constantly, an obsessive relationship with growers, and none of the stiffness. It holds a Bib Gourmand and has become the place chefs go on their nights off. Book, because everyone else has worked this out too.

Flawd

The Higher Ground team’s canalside wine bar at New Islington marina, and the loveliest place in Manchester to spend an afternoon. Low intervention wine by the glass, small plates that punch far above the format, and tables by the water when the sun cooperates. Proof that a wine bar can take food as seriously as a restaurant does.

Erst

Ancoats again, and the natural wine bar that got there first. Small plates, a chalkboard that changes with the day, and a list of interesting bottles poured by people who can talk about them without lecturing you. It holds a Bib Gourmand, and it remains the easiest good meal in the neighbourhood.

Bundobust

Indian street food and craft beer, in a format so obvious in hindsight that it seems strange nobody did it sooner. Vegetarian throughout, cheap, brilliant, and holder of a Bib Gourmand. The okra fries and the vada pav are the order, with whatever is on tap from their own brewery. Loud, informal and constantly full.

Trove

The corner shop bakery that turned into an institution, baking sourdough and pastries in Levenshulme and feeding half of south Manchester. Bread you would cross the city for, a proper breakfast and lunch menu, and the sort of queue on a Saturday that has become a Manchester ritual in its own right. Get there early for the cinnamon buns.

Mackie Mayor

A magnificently restored Victorian market hall in the Northern Quarter, filled with independent traders selling everything from steak and dumplings to pizza and coffee, with communal tables in the middle and light pouring through the roof. No bookings, no fuss, and the best possible solution for a group that cannot agree.

Hawksmoor

The Manchester branch occupies a Grade II listed former courthouse on Deansgate, and is widely held to be the best in the group. Beef dry aged for at least thirty five days, cooked over charcoal, in a room whose ceilings and panelling do a great deal of the work. Go at lunch for the express menu if the full experience feels excessive.

Also worth your time:

The Curry Mile in Rusholme for the food that built Manchester’s reputation long before anyone mentioned Michelin; GRUB and Levenshulme market for street food at weekends; and 10 Tib Lane for another Bib Gourmand and one of the best value lunches in the centre.