Brunch – the one thing in the world that makes 20-somethings feel a hell of a lot fancier than they are (and allows us to be drunk by midday with a perfectly valid excuse). In Manchester, we have TONS of options for boujie brunches, but all have their own little quirks that make them worthy of the latter end of your paycheck. Personally, the only thing I’m getting out of bed for on a weekend is brunch – so when I was invited to chat all things phone cases with Ideal of Sweden last weekend at my fave place, Menagerie, I jumped at the chance.
If you’ve never been to Menagerie and you’re local to Manchester, you really have no excuse. It’s going to be great no matter what you go for – dinner, cocktails, a night out or brunch – even just the photo opps! It really does have to be one of the prettiest places in the city, even the cutlery is golden. There’s a reason our fave Cheshire housewives are seen here on the regular… I mean, naturally being a Northern bird, I’m pretty happy with anywhere that sells booze – but one thing I am a total connoisseur on is a full English breakfast. So, being a beautiful day I donned the Oliver Peoples sunglasses and headed off!
For the brunch menu that we had, there was bottomless prosecco (or mimosas depending on how hardcore you are for 11am on a Sunday morning), teas and coffees and the choice of not one, but TWO breakfasts. Even me and my too-big-for-my-belly eyes were surprised. For my first choice, I went with the Full English Breakfast (of course! You can take the girl out of Yorkshire…) to begin with, which came with Cumberland sausages, eggs (with a choice of how you’d like them cooking), black pudding, bacon, toast, tomatoes, beans and (what I believe to be) parsnips. As you can imagine, I was pretty full – but it was delicious, and definitely the amount of food required after a ton of prosecco.
Other choices on the menu were things like eggs on toast, avo on toast, French toast (which looked AMAZING I must say – it had Nutella and melted marshmallows in the middle! I actually have FOMO over the fact that I didn’t order it), the usual sausage/bacon sandwiches and eggs Florentine/benedict. Pretty much something for everybody!
One thing I do love is how the atmosphere changes here, you go from a quiet morning, to a more upbeat dinner, to full on night out with performers – I’ve experienced Menagerie at every time of day and while I don’t have a favourite, i’ll definitely be back for those chilled but glam brunch vibes. To follow the full English, I went with the Pancake stack, which is served with maple syrup and icing sugar on top. Delish! I don’t usually go for pancakes as I’m more of a chocolate kind of gal, but these were so fluffy, I just couldn’t resist.
Huge thanks to Mike for treating me to brunch! Til next time, Menagerie!