Restaurant in Manchester, United Kingdom
Manchester's Michelin star. Book early or miss out.
Manchester's only Michelin-starred restaurant, Mana has held its star since 2019 with Simon Martin's technically ambitious tasting menus in a focused Ancoats room. The 'Complete' menu runs £175 per head for 13 courses; the £70 lunch is the smartest entry point. Booking is hard — reserve well ahead. At this level in Manchester, there is no direct competition.
Mana has 28 seats available across two lunch sittings and two dinner sittings per service day, Wednesday through Saturday only. If you want a table, book the moment reservations open. This is Manchester's sole Michelin-starred restaurant, and it fills fast — not because of hype, but because the room is deliberately small and the kitchen team is not scaling up to meet demand.
Book here if: you want the most technically ambitious cooking in Manchester, you are comfortable with a multi-course tasting menu as the only format, and you accept that £175 per person for the full 'Complete' menu is the price of entry. Do not book here expecting a la carte flexibility, a casual drop-in, or a short evening.
When Simon Martin opened Mana on Blossom Street in Ancoats in 2018, Manchester had been without a Michelin star for four decades. Within a year, that ended. The Michelin star arrived in 2019 and has been retained since, with the 2024 guide confirming the award. That single credential reframes every price conversation: at £175 per person for the 'Complete' tasting menu, you are paying for the only Michelin-starred kitchen in the city, not merely an expensive dinner.
The room itself is part of the proposition. The double-height space with its monolithic open kitchen and white-hung windows creates a deliberate separation from the Ancoats streets outside — not precious or hushed, but focused. The open-plan layout means chefs and diners share the same air; snacks are served at the bar and in the kitchen itself, including dishes eaten at the pass. The ambient energy is purposeful rather than loud, more concentrated working kitchen than theatrical performance venue. If you are looking for a noisy, convivial room, this is not it. If you want to be close enough to the cooking to understand what is happening, Mana delivers that in a way few UK restaurants attempt at this price point.
The 'Complete' menu runs to 13 courses at £175 per person. A shorter 'Extracts' version is available at £110, and the lunch menu comes in at £70 per person , the most accessible entry point, and genuinely worth considering for a first visit. Wine pairings are available alongside all formats. The cooking draws on British produce throughout, with a pronounced interest in Asian technique: preserved ingredients, fermentation, koji, miso. Seafood features heavily, grounded in the logic that the UK is an island with exceptional coastal supply.
Editorial record on the food is largely strong but not uncritical. Laminated onion bread with foie gras, Scottish lobster carved with surgical precision and served in a kintsugi bowl, and hogget barbecued pink with young miso sabayon are cited as genuine high points. There are also noted missteps: flavours that occasionally tip too strong, and at least one ingredient that outstays its welcome across multiple courses. This is cooking that reaches, and not every reach lands cleanly. For an explorer who wants ambition over polish, that is a reasonable trade. For someone seeking a faultless, smooth progression of courses, it is worth knowing in advance.
Service question is the one that most directly affects whether Mana earns its price tag for a given diner. The room's open-plan ethos is designed to break down traditional barriers between kitchen and guest, and at its leading it does exactly that , moments of genuine enthusiasm from the team create a perceptible shift in the room's warmth. But the record also shows that service can feel stiff and one-sided, particularly around the wine pairing, where information can be delivered without invitation for response. At £175 to £225-plus per head with wine, a service experience that feels transactional rather than engaged is a meaningful gap in the proposition.
This is not a reason to avoid Mana. It is a reason to calibrate expectations. The kitchen's technical commitment is not in question. The room is well-designed. The sourcing is serious. But if service warmth is what tips your yes/no decision, factor in that it runs inconsistently, and that the lunch sitting at £70 per person gives you a lower-stakes opportunity to form your own view before committing to a full dinner spend.
Mana operates Wednesday to Saturday only. Dinner sittings run at 7pm to 8pm start times on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Lunch is 12pm to 1pm on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Wednesday appears to run different hours (listed as 6:30am to 7:30pm, which likely reflects a prep or private event window rather than standard public service , confirm directly before booking). Sunday and Monday are closed.
Booking difficulty is rated hard. This is a small room with limited covers and no walk-in culture. Book as far in advance as the reservation system allows. If you are visiting Manchester from elsewhere, align your travel dates to your booking confirmation, not the other way around. Mana is worth planning around, but it will not hold a table while you decide.
For context on where Mana sits within the wider northern England Michelin landscape, L'Enclume in Cartmel holds three Michelin stars and represents the ceiling of ambition in the region. Moor Hall in Aughton offers a two-star comparison point with a broader menu format. Mana at one star and the prices it commands sits confidently within that tier nationally, closer in register to CORE by Clare Smyth in London or Atomix in New York City in terms of the seriousness of the tasting menu format than to a neighbourhood fine-dining room.
Within Manchester itself, the comparison set is thinner. Skof operates at the same price tier with creative ambition, and Adam Reid at the French offers modern European cooking with strong local credentials. Neither holds a Michelin star. If the star matters to you, Mana has no local competition on that measure.
For broader Manchester dining context, see our full Manchester restaurants guide, our full Manchester hotels guide, and our full Manchester bars guide. If you are planning a wider Ancoats visit, Another Hand and 10 Tib Lane offer lower-commitment alternatives in the neighbourhood.
Quick reference: Mana, 42 Blossom St, Ancoats, M4 6BF. Michelin 1 Star (2024). Tasting menu only: £175 (Complete, 13 courses), £110 (Extracts), £70 (lunch). Wed–Sat only. Booking: hard , reserve well in advance. Google rating: 4.7 from 407 reviews.
| Venue | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|
| mana | ££££ | — |
| Skof | ££££ | — |
| Erst | £££ | — |
| Higher Ground | ££ | — |
| MAYA | ££ | — |
| Adam Reid at the French | — |
Key differences to consider before you reserve.
Yes — snacks are served at the bar and in the kitchen, including bites eaten directly at the pass, as part of the tasting menu experience rather than as a standalone walk-in option. Mana operates on a set tasting menu format only, so sitting at the bar is part of the full service sequence, not an alternative entry point. If you want the bar experience without committing to the full menu, Mana is not structured for that.
Mana runs a tasting menu only — there is no à la carte. The Complete menu is £175 per person, a shorter Extracts version is £110, and lunch is £70. Service runs Wednesday to Saturday only, with just 28 seats across two sittings per day, so booking well in advance is essential. Simon Martin ended Manchester's 40-year Michelin star drought here in 2019, and the kitchen operates in full view of the dining room — the format is deliberately immersive, not a conventional sit-and-order dinner.
Mana's design ethos is deliberately anti-formal — the open-plan layout is intended to break down traditional barriers between kitchen and dining room, and the ambience is described as deliberately chilled. That said, at £110–£175 per head, most guests dress accordingly: put-together rather than suited. There is no documented dress code in the venue data, but turning up in gym wear at a Michelin-starred restaurant would read as a mismatch.
Adam Reid at the French is the closest peer — another serious, chef-led tasting menu format in Manchester city centre. Higher Ground and Erst in Ancoats both offer chef-driven, produce-focused cooking at a considerably lower price point if you want creative food without the £175 commitment. MAYA and Skof round out Manchester's better end, with Skof in particular worth watching as a newer arrival in the same serious-cooking category.
At £175 for the Complete menu, Mana delivers a technically ambitious, multi-course format backed by a Michelin star earned in 2019 and retained through 2024 — the only star in Manchester. The cooking has real high points, including the laminated onion bread and Scottish lobster, though reviewers note occasional flavour missteps and service that can feel one-sided. If tasting menus are your format and you want the most credentialled table in Manchester, yes — but if you prefer relaxed, à la carte dining, the format will not suit you regardless of quality.
Lunch at £70 per person is the practical answer for most — it is a compressed version of the tasting menu at less than half the Complete dinner price, on a day (Thursday through Saturday) where you get the same kitchen and same room. Dinner at £175 gives you the full 13-course sequence and is the right call if you want the complete version of what Mana is doing. For a first visit or a price-sensitive booking, lunch is the lower-risk entry point.
Yes, with a clear-eyed understanding of what you are booking. Mana is a 28-seat, Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant with an open kitchen and well-spaced tables — it is a serious dinner, not a celebratory party venue. It works for birthdays, anniversaries, or milestone meals where the food is the occasion. Groups wanting noise, flexibility, or a long evening of drinking and ordering will find the fixed format constraining. Book it when the meal itself is the point.
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