The café where you can have fish and chips at 8am - and then have a Full English for your tea
Rowntree’s Cafe is the kind of place you can sit all day and watch the world go by. There’s a reassuring rhythm to much-loved caff in the Arndale Centre. The shutters have barely come up, but at 8am sharp, regulars head in, take their usual spot and put in their orders.
He’s been looking after hungry Mancunians since he was 17 when he started working for his dad, Cyprus native ‘Mr Chris’, as regulars called him. His dad owned several eateries in the city centre, way before Manchester’s food and drink scene really took off. “It has definitely been getting harder, but we’re not doing too bad as we rely on a lot of regular customers, and they’re still coming,” he explains. “We’re also lucky that we’re on electric here rather than gas.”
“We put Corrie on the menus and the walls because it’s just so Manchester. We were going to put football but if you put United you have a problem, and if you put just City you have a problem. Coronation Street is in the middle, everyone knows it.” All the potatoes are peeled on site, fried in vegetable oil for perfectly cooked chips, while peas are done the old fashioned way, stepped overnight. Lui says cooking fresh and to order also allows him to serve up dishes exactly to customer’s preferences.
Today, there’s a string of new cafes and restaurants popping up in the Arndale, but just last year Lui and his team picked up the award for best Café, Bar and Restaurant of the Year at the Manchester Arndale Retail Awards, or MARAS as they’re known in these parts. Lui proudly showed me a video of the ceremony, where in a tongue-in-cheek introduction, Rowntree’s was described as having ‘better service than the Midland’.
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