Best Burgers in Manchester City Centre (and Where to Go for Dessert)

Almost Famous is the burger name most Manchester people reach for first, and it has been part of the Northern Quarter since Beau Myers opened the original on High Street in 2012. He took his cues from In-N-Out in California and MEATliquor in London, and built the reputation on deliberately overloaded burgers and a walk-in door policy. The restaurant now sits on Edge Street in the middle of the Northern Quarter, run by the Manchester operator D2, the team behind PINS Social Club, under managing director Daniel Kelly. It opens seven days a week and takes bookings as well as walk-ins.

The beef is heritage breed from Altham's, a family butcher trading since 1856, using Aberdeen Angus, Hereford and Shorthorn hung for around 14 days and torn rather than chopped for a juicier patty. The Manchester special is the Unabomber, a double cheeseburger with chorizo, wonderdusted waffle fries, crispy jalapeños, cholula, bacon mayo and jalapeño mustard, and the Pickleback is the most pickle-loaded burger the kitchen has built. Winning Fries are the house side, there is a plant-based patty, gluten-free buns on request and a rotating weekly special. The room runs on booths, exposed brick and pop-art murals, with milkshakes and house cocktails alongside the burgers.

PUBLIC opened on Stevenson Square in July 2023 and has become one of the busiest corners of the Northern Quarter. It comes from Zanna Group, the Manchester team behind Evelyn's, The Daisy, Mughli, The Gooey and Onda Pasta Bar. The bar doubles as an exhibition space, with rotating photography and sculpture by local artists on the walls and DJs through the week. Its terrace on the sunnier side of Stevenson Square seats almost 300, one of the largest outdoor spaces in Manchester city centre.

The food menu is short and built around American classics crossed with the punchy flavours of New York's Chinatown. The burger is beef on a soft bun with American cheese, white onion, burger sauce, disco pickles and house ketchup, served in a paper sleeve, and the Sando is buttermilk fried chicken with iceberg, sriracha mayo, sesame and gochugaru. Around them sit gun gun noodles in hot oil, glazed char siu pork belly skewers, baby back ribs and crispy soy wings. The interior takes its cue from Lower East Side dive bars in New York, with mismatched furniture, cream tile work and industrial piping, and happy hour prices kick in when it rains.

Chakalaka brought South African bar food to the Northern Quarter when it opened on Oldham Street in October 2018, the first of its kind in the area. It takes its name from chakalaka, the spicy tomato, chilli and bean relish that the kitchen makes in house. Directors Stewart Dean and Chris Potts started it, in their own words, out of friends having fun and wanting to celebrate South African cooking in a city they know and love. Specialities are imported from South Africa, and the boerewors sausages are handmade locally by a South African butcher.

The burgers are the draw for this guide: a Classic with a handmade pork and beef patty, a Gourmet with biltong and monkey gland sauce, a Gourmet Blue with blue cheese, and a veggie version. Around them runs a full South African menu of bunny chow served in a hollowed loaf, boerewors rolls, bobotie, sosaties, jaffles, pap balls and koeksisters, most of it built for sharing. Vegetarian and vegan choices run right through, including a potato and chickpea bunny chow and a paneer and spinach curry. Drinks cover Castle and Windhoek beer, the house Chakalager, homemade ginger beer and South African cocktails, and there is a large outdoor area at the back.

Elnecot sits on Cutting Room Square, the pedestrianised heart of Ancoats, in a converted former fish warehouse known as the Ice Plant. Chef Michael Clay and Michael Lever opened it in September 2017, and the name comes from Elnecot, the 1212 record of the hamlet that stood here long before the cotton mills. The room was built around an open kitchen and a 44ft concrete bar, with long communal benches and furniture made from local wood. Hallé St Peter's, the restored former church, stands on the same square.

The kitchen is modern British, seasonal and heavily British-sourced, with plenty of pickling and fermentation. The burger is a Welsh Wagyu cheeseburger with onion and pickle, made with dry-aged Welsh black wagyu from Upper Bryntalch Farm in Powys, and it can be made gluten-free, with a veggie burger alongside it. The rest of the menu takes in Manchester eggs with homemade piccalilli, pig's head croquettes, Devon brown crab crumpets, Staffordshire tacos and 24-hour ribs with gochujang barbecue sauce, and Sunday roasts use the same wagyu topside. Wine comes from Buon Vino, the beer is local from Cloudwater and Shindigger, and the cocktails are named after Victorian Manchester scuttler gangs.

Honest Burgers started with Tom Barton and Philip Eeles cooking burgers in a tent at a friend's party in a Brighton field around 2010, then a pop-up, then a first restaurant in Brixton in 2011. The Bridge Street site opened on 15 April 2019 and was the company's first in the north of England. It takes three storeys of Manchester Hall, the Grade II listed former Freemasons Hall on the edge of Spinningfields. Inside there are bare bricks, plank panels and mini girders, an open kitchen, booths, outdoor seating and a roof terrace on the second floor.

The beef is 100% British and butchered in the company's own butchery, chopped rather than minced so the patty eats closer to a steak. The Manchester burger is exclusive to this restaurant, made by head chef Paul with Salford Rum: smoked bacon, cheddar, honey rum barbecue sauce, shoestring fries, yellow pepper mayo, tomato, lettuce and onion, available with beef, fried chicken or a double smashed patty, and in a gluten-free version. The rest of the menu runs to the Honest with red onion relish and smoked bacon, the Clapham with raclette and truffle mayo, and the vegetarian Fritter, all served with handmade rosemary salted chips. Vegan and halal chicken options are on the menu too, and the company's own burger, the Honest, won the National Burger Awards in 2026.

Hawksmoor is a British steakhouse and cocktail bar, and its Manchester dining room is one of the grandest in the city centre. Will Beckett and Huw Gott, friends since they were eleven, opened the first Hawksmoor in Spitalfields in 2006, and Manchester followed on 5 March 2015 as the first site outside London, winning Best Newcomer at the Manchester Food and Drink Festival. It occupies 184-186 Deansgate, a Grade II listed building of 1896 by William Thomas Oldreive that housed the Inland Revenue office and the High Court Registry. The fit-out was assembled almost entirely from salvage: reclaimed parquet from a Midlands courthouse, oak panelling from a Birmingham college, glazed brick, a long brass-clad bar and antique Holophane pendants from New Jersey.

The beef is grass-fed native breed from Tim Wilson's Longhorn herd in North Yorkshire, dry-aged in house. The burger to order is the Big Matt, created by group executive chef Matt Brown in 2017: a double-decker cheeseburger with two dry-aged patties, Big Matt sauce and beef dripping fries, voted the world's number one burger in 2023. It appears on the lunch specials menu from Monday to Saturday, so this one is worth planning as a daytime stop. The restaurant seats 130 with a separate 44-seat cocktail bar, and there are vegetarian dishes including a Winslade Wellington.