The student loan arrives and feels like a lot of money. It isn’t. Manchester will help you spend it faster than you expect if you don’t know where to eat. This isn’t about sacrificing food quality – Manchester has some of the best value eating in the country. It’s about knowing which doors to walk through.
The Curry Mile – Your Most Important Discovery
Rusholme’s Wilmslow Road is a 20-minute walk from UoM campus and five minutes from Fallowfield. It is the single best place to eat cheaply and well in Manchester. About a mile of South Asian restaurants, mostly Pakistani and Bangladeshi, competing on price and quality. A full curry, naan, and sides for £6–8 is standard. Most places are BYOB with no corkage – take a can from the corner shop next door and your meal out costs less than cooking at home.
Where to start: Yadgar on Wilmslow Road does the best karahi dishes. Al-Faisal is where the taxi drivers eat, which tells you everything. Kabana is open until 3am and serves the best late-night meal in the city – the nihari (slow-cooked lamb shank curry) at midnight is one of Manchester’s great experiences. Saj House does Palestinian flatbreads for £5–6 that are the size of your arm. Most people walk straight past it.
Student tip: Go on a weekday evening – weekends the Curry Mile gets busy and some places push prices up. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are quieter and the food is just as good.
This & That – Soap Street, NQ
A Manchester institution that every student should know. You queue up, point at the curries behind the glass, and say rice and three – rice and three curries for about £6.50. Cash only, no bookings, seats when someone leaves. Been here since 1984. It’s a 10-minute walk from MMU’s All Saints campus and 20 minutes from UoM. Go for lunch, not dinner – it gets full fast.
Arndale Market
The Arndale food court is underrated. The Sri Lankan stall does rice and curry for about £7 in portions that actually fill you up. The Caribbean jerk chicken is £7.50. The Vietnamese pho is £8. It’s loud and chaotic at lunchtime but the quality across the board is well above shopping centre average. Good to know about for days you’re in the city centre between lectures.
Chinatown
Ho’s Bakery on Faulkner Street – char siu bao (BBQ pork buns) at £1.50 each. Three of them is a full meal for £4.50. The egg tarts are 80p. It is the cheapest good lunch in central Manchester. Everything is fresh and the turnover is rapid. There are benches in Chinatown square if you want to eat outside. No seats inside – purely takeaway.
Red Chilli on Portland Street does Sichuan food with a proper lunch menu at £8–9. The mapo tofu will ruin you for supermarket food. Go at 12 before it fills up.
Bundobust – Oxford Road
Indian street food on Oxford Road, a two-minute walk from the UoM campus. The vada pav is £5 – a spiced potato fritter in a soft bun with green chutney that’ll clear your sinuses. The okra fries are legendary. Two small plates and you’re done for about £8–9. The beer isn’t cheap but the food absolutely is. One of the best value spots on the student corridor.
How to Make Your Loan Last
The weekly shop
Aldi on Oxford Road is your best friend. Learn to cook four or five cheap meals – daal, pasta, stir fry, rice dishes – and rotate them through the week. A weekly shop for one person should be £25–35 if you’re buying basics and cooking from scratch. The moment you start buying pre-made meals it doubles. Lidl in Fallowfield is the other option.
BYOB rules
Half the Curry Mile restaurants are BYOB with no corkage. The supermarket next door sells Cobra for £1.50 a can. A curry, naan, and two cans of beer for under £10 is the best value night out in Manchester. Check before you go – some places have started charging corkage as they’ve got busier.
Lunchtime deals
Most restaurants do lunch menus at half the dinner price. Koreana on King Street does a lunch bibimbap or bulgogi with sides for £9 – the best value hot lunch in the city centre. This & That is lunch only. The Arndale market is lunch only for most stalls. Your cheapest meals will almost always be between 12 and 2pm.
Student discounts
Get a TOTUM card (formerly NUS Extra) – £12 a year and it pays for itself fast. Many restaurants don’t advertise student discounts but offer them if you ask. Pizza Express, Wagamama, and most chain restaurants do 25–30% off for students. Not the places on this list, but useful when you need something quick in the city centre.
Late Night Eating
After a night out, the Curry Mile is the answer. Kabana is open until 3am and the mixed grill at midnight is enormous for £9. The takeaway strip on Wilmslow Road in Fallowfield does the usual – pizza, kebabs, fried chicken. It’s not exciting but it’s open and cheap. The Manchester institution is the greasy spoon fry-up the morning after – Cafe Mila near Oxford Road does a full English for £6 that has saved many a freshers week.