Best of MCR: Cheap Eats

MANCHESTER’S food stock is on the up and up.

Let's just stop there before somebody mentions Michelin. Manchester doesn’t ‘need’ a star. Nobody needs a star. Up-its-own-jacksie twaddle. Customers on the other hand, those you need.

Day in day out, we need 'Cheap Eats'. Quick, tasty, cheerful grub for around a fiver, swiftly reviewed and launched at your eyes in less than 500 words. No tarting around.

Celebrated London-only operators have taken note of Manchester's food and drink spring, with a good number now eyeing us up for their first ventures outside of the capital.

Of course, this is great news for Manchester, the 'second city'. National prestige'n'all that. It also encourages more operators to dip a toe in the provinces and our Gordo to salivate like a wolf staring through the window of a Bernard Matthews' slaughterhouse.

Still, for most of us these fine-diners aren't everyday occurrences. We'd soon find ourselves bankrupt and in the gutter, too fat and much too drunk to roll ourselves back out.

So day in day out we need 'Cheap Eats'. Quick, tasty, cheerful grub for around a fiver, swiftly reviewed and launched at your eyes in less than 500 words. No tarting around.

So Confidential's 'Cheap Eats' series was born. The best the city has to offer for a great feed on a tight budget.

Bang-on grub for around a fiver

Here's an alphabetical list of what we've scoffed our way through so far - we'll update the list as our arses get bigger, so feel free to give us your favourite 'Cheap Eat' suggestions in the rants section below:

Arndale Food Market

If 'Cheap Eats' is what you're after, the Arndale Food Market is your Shangri-La. Panchos Mexican, Zorbas Greek and the Viet-Shack (below) are stand outs here, alongside affordable Indian, Chinese, Afro-Caribbean, Brazilian, Pan-European and Pan-Asian options, most between £3 to £6. Zorba's halloumi pitta with salad and a dollop of hummus (£3.50) is a banker. The fried halloumi, all warm, salty and squeaky served in a fresh pitta with cold crispy salad, hummus made in-house and enough onion to floor Shrek. Their stifado stew at only £4 is a great feed too. Remarkably unhandsome the Arndale Markets, but for cheap eats this is a beauty.

Arndale Food Markets, Arndale Centre, Market Street. M3 3AH. 0161 234 5000.

Zorba's halloumi pitta with hummus

Café Marhaba

"Everyone argues about their favourite Northern Quarter curry house and they’re all wrong. Most do decent curries (and each has its best dish) but for me it’s all about the breads. If the bread ain’t good and fresh I’m not interested. Most curry cafes have breads that are grilled, or stacked up ready for service and kept warm(ish) under tea towels. The Marhaba is the only N4 café with its own tandoor and the breads are sensational. Dough rolled out in front of you, in and out of the oven in a heart-beat, and served blistered and slathered with ghee. The contrast between the grainy dry underside where the bread has been against the oven wall and the bubbled outer side slick with butter is key. You don’t get better quality for this price anywhere. Not far past a fiver for a couple of curries and a naan." - Thom Hetherington

Café Marhaba, 36 Back Piccadilly, M1 1HP. 0161 228 7377

Blistering naan

Changos Burrito Bar

On the last visit to Changos we suffered the loss of a burst burrito, it slid between the fingers, down the chin, into the hair and up the nose. It was too big for it's own boots, usually a burrito bonus. We've since been back though, and Changos held it together. This is a meal torpedo for £5.50 (large), with either chicken, slow cooked beef, pork, chilli beef or veggie, with all the extra bits like cheese and guacamole - the bits you're often made to pay for - gratis. Choose oak-smoked chipotle and nachos crumbled into the fray for a stroke of Tex-Mex flair. Forget your evening meal.

Changos Burrito Bar, 91-93 Oxford Street, M1 6ET. 0161 228 2182

Changos' meal torpedo

Fruit Exchange

Often the issue with 'Cheap Eats' is that they veer off towards pleasure at the expense of your arteries. So Deansgate's Fruit Exchange is our healthy option (because we had to include one), a retreat for those that hop between magazine juice diets and think avocados will save the planet. Salads and freshly made sarnies are the fare here, the Greek salad being the pick for health-buffs, a large box with a hefty helping of feta and olives (usually scrimped on by supermarkets) alongside leaves and tomatoes for a cheerful £3.25. Good on the body and the pocket.

Fruit Exchange, 103 Deansgate, M3 2BQ. 0161 832 3572

Fruit Exchange salad

Linda's Pantry

Trip Advisor's #26 of 1,652 restaurants in all of Manchester, which is odd because only four people know where this place is, Linda, Thom Hetherington (who told us about this place, cheers Thom) and two builders who come for the £4 Full English every morning. Available only on Fridays, Linda's cheese and onion pie with chips and gravy for around £3.50 is an extra special Friday special. Proper hand-cut chips (actually hand-cut with a knife, meaning you get the occasional flat ends of the spud) are double-cooked, while a homemade pie is oven-baked on enamel plates and quartered in front of you before lashings of gravy gets poured over the lot. Get there at midday when they're hot out the oven.

Linda's Pantry, 23 Ducie Street, NQ/Ancoats, M1 2JL. 0161 236 4252

Linda's Pantry

Pita Pit

A Canadian international restaurant franchise with nearly 500 outlets worldwide and probably owned by 'The Man' or Simon Cowell or something. Still, when you'd chew your nan's toenails for just one more bite, who really cares. Tucked away in a sad and shady Piccadilly alcove, Pita Pit is a little belter. The formula here is simple: quick, tasty, ample and healthy tucker for under a fiver served up by staff who'd probably rub your shoulders if you asked nicely. Pick a lovely, warm, soft and lightly-toasted pocket pita bread and have it caressed with hummus, choose your meat (sweet tikka chicken chunks are a winner) then scoot along the counter ramming it to bursting point with as much of the add-ons as you please. Bolt it together, slip-on protective gloves and goggles and go at it. Pitas start at £3.

Pita Pit, 3 Piccadilly Place, Manchester, M1 3BG.

Pita Pit

Siam Smiles Noodle Bar

This half-Thai-supermarket half-Thai-noodle-diner is the most fascinating entry on this list by a country noodle. Probably one of the most fascinating meals you'll have in MCR. Why? Well, along with the city's food and drink spring comes a conveyor belt of yawn: Exposed brick'n'pipe, tiki, Americana, £10 cocktails down in a sip and 'locally sourced' (Cumbria isn't local, it's 120km away) ingredients. Siam Smiles is none of that. It's dried fish throat crisps and congealed chicken blood floating in bright magnenta soup, unidentifiable jarred gloop and uranium-powered energy drinks. Ok so you may not necessarily get exactly what you ordered (wouldn't bother if you're a veggie), but if you do, go for the Kuay Tiew Duck (pronounced Kuay Tiew Duck) - a wonderful duck, noodle and beansprout broth with small fishy frisbees for £5.50. Make sure to stir in a squirt of Nam Pla (fish sauce) - Thai's plop it on everything.

Siam Smiles, 48 George Street, Chinatown, M1 4HF

Siam Smiles

Slice

Italian food is more often than not uninspired, lazy and dull. But pizza, real Roman pizza (pizza from Naples differs slightly) done propa' is a fine thing indeed. The guys here are so into propa' pizza that they've spent lengthy spells under a Pizza Master in Rome, and have had a specialist Italian pizza oven shipped over to get it just right. Right it is. Graphene-thin and crispy, with the ingredients up top left to take the lead without the mush of heavy-set dough below. Try the spicy arrabbiata with buffalo mozzarella, rocket and tomoto sauce for under £3 a helping. Actually, try all of them alongside mattress thick focaccia bread. Then jump on your vespa, pick up Sofia and go kiss by the fontana. Meraviglioso.

Slice, Stevenson Square, Northern Quarter, M1 1DN. 0161 236 9032

Slice's spicy arrabbiata

Soup Kitchen

SK is one of those multi-armed NQ operations: Monday you're nursing an ale and dunking a chunky sandwich in soup, Wednesday you're watching a Finnish saxophonist, Saturday sweating it out downstairs to some obscure French DJ, then Sunday, we don't talk about Sunday. For the most part this place plays at school canteen with long wooden benches, steaming food trays, pastries under glass lids, chalk on blackboards and 70s wooden panels pulled from the staircase of The Brady Bunch. The soups - all £3.75 - come served in that white and blue indestructible prison enamel that seems to be having a moment. The pick is the ale, onion and cheddar soup, a stout brown gloop sweetened by caramelized onions and sharpened with a hefty handful of cheese. Take as much dunking bread from the counter as you please. Oliver Twist would go ape-shit.

Soup Kitchen, 31-33 Spear Street, M1 1DF. 0161 236 5100

Soup Kitchen's ale, onion and cheese soup (£3.75)

This'n'That

A Manchester budget favourite and pioneer of the 'rice'n'three' concept (rice with any three combinations of meat and veg), This'n'That is a Northern Quarter curry cafe that's been serving up spicy homemade food for a few bob since David Bowie still wore face paint and cars were beige. Ignoring the interior, which probably cost less than your meal, two sturdy, filling meats on mounds of rice with veg for under a fiver is a steal. Ram it all in a chatpati sandwich for 50p and you're going to need rolling home.

This'n'That, Soap Street, off Thomas Street, M4 1EW. 0161 832 0708

This'n'That rice and three

Viet Shack

One of many inexpensive and quality food offerings in the hugely undervalued Arndale Food Markets, Viet-Shack has only recently pitched up, and has been stealing queues from other vendors ever since. Owner Nelson Lam (aka Mr Shack) has merged traditional Vietnamese cooking with his 'mama's home cooking'. Lam has exiled anything artificial or processed and is dishing up fine food for a knock-off price. At £5.50, the beautifully crisp and spicy BBQ pork chops with rice (they can go too heavy on the rice, mind) is the most expensive choice on the menu and a great feed.

Viet Shack, Arndale Food Markets, M4 3AH. 0161 234 5000

Viet Shack's BBQ pork chops