IN THE heart of Manchester’s Northern Quarter is the Northern Soul Café – located on Church Street Market.
Taking it’s influences from laid back style diners, and the sounds of Northern Soul music, the café focuses on grilled sandwiches and has a new menu every month, which features the classic sandwiches, soups and shakes. For the past two years, Northern Soul have had a stall on the Christmas Markets.
Erm, there's a snowman running around #McrChristmas Markets eating up all the #GrilledCheese – Better get down before it runs out! pic.twitter.com/5YUGgYabwY
— Northern Soul Grilled Cheese, MCR (@NorthernSoulMcr) November 14, 2016
Lizzy and Dan Place are the owners of Northern Soul, which opened early in 2015, Lizzy tells how they have managed to secure a stall at the markets for two years running “It’s a two month waiting list, this opportunity presented itself and we applied for it.”
“And then out of about twenty it whittles down to about six, then it’s kind of like of Dragons Den type system, you have to pitch your idea and demonstrate what type of food you’re going to do, then it’s either a yes or a no so it has been very, very frantic.”
The café is using the markets as a trial for their Christmas menu, which will be featured at their Market Street café, the menu includes sandwiches such as ‘Brie Wish You a Merry Xmas’ which consists of grilled brie, bacon and cranberry sauce, and the ‘Xmas Sandwich’ which is a grilled cheese sandwich consisting of all the Christmas dinner leftovers,
“The market has proved a good way for us to test customers’ reaction to our Christmas menu, to implement at our café”.
Me old man with a #crimbodinner #grilledcheese down the @MCRMarkets #christmasmarkets pic.twitter.com/1msuuzELBt
— Northern Soul Grilled Cheese, MCR (@NorthernSoulMcr) November 12, 2016
Lizzy was previously a teacher prior to being the part owner of Northern Soul, with her husband Dan.
“I’d had enough of teaching and wondering what the next thing was to do, we’d decided we’d seen enough Burger Bars in Manchester and thought grilled cheese might work, we wanted to keep it quite Manchester based, and that’s where the combination of the two came from, the music and the soulful food.”
Dan and Liz are also owners of Milkshake bar, which is also a popular stall in Manchester’s Arndale Market, she explains that this is one of the reasons she is hesitant to branch out with Northern Soul Grilled Cheese.
“We have previously branched out with the milkshake bar and had some difficulty, but we have got something in the works, so keep an eye out.”
Northern Soul café will also feature on the BBC in the next coming weeks on Christmas Spotlight.
Find it on Church Street Market, Manchester, open from 11am to 6pm Monday to Wednesday, 11am to 8pm Thursday to Saturday, and 11am to 4pm on Sunday, and at this year’s Christmas Markets in Albert Square.
To find out more follow @NorthernSoulMcr on Twitter. Or read more about them on the Northern Soul Grilled.
By Elliott Lancaster
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