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

The Bay Horse Tavern sits on Thomas Street in the heart of Manchester's Northern Quarter and describes itself as a modern take on a Victorian pub. Food is served every day from midday, and from 11am at weekends, with a long list of gins and craft beers behind the bar. It also runs set dining and group buffet menus, so it suits a big Sunday get-together as well as lunch for two.

The Sunday roast menu offers topside of beef, roast chicken supreme and a vegan roast cauliflower. Every roast comes with giant Yorkshire puddings, seasonal vegetables, garlic and rosemary roast potatoes and gravy. The beef topside has come from Deep Clough Farm, and the pub is known for its pigs in blankets and its cauliflower cheese made with Black Bomber cheddar.

Evelyn's is a neighbourhood restaurant on Tib Street in Manchester's Northern Quarter, serving brunch classics by day and small plates by night. The kitchen is built around a charcoal Inka grill for live-fire cooking, with ideas drawn from Levantine and Pan-Asian food. Seasonal ingredients lead the menu, and downstairs is The Daisy, a Parisian-inspired bar with local DJs at weekends.

On Sundays the whole day is given over to a full roast menu. Roasts have included mustard-rubbed sirloin, harissa buttermilk chicken and lamb in a Moroccan-inspired marinade, with a puy lentil Wellington for vegetarians. The cauliflower cheese is made with three cheeses: gruyère, cheddar and mozzarella. It brings the grill's spice and char to a classic Manchester Sunday roast.

The Angel is a backstreet freehouse on Angel Street, on the edge of Manchester's Northern Quarter. The downstairs bar is wood-panelled and has no television, so it is made for conversation, lunch and after-work drinks. Upstairs is a restaurant with a log fire, and the bar pours beers from small independent breweries alongside handpicked wines.

The kitchen, led by head chef Dan England, cooks a modern British menu with locally sourced ingredients. Through the week that means small plates such as black pudding bon bons, and on Sundays the focus turns to the roast. The pub is known for its independent cask ales and its fireside Sunday roasts, which makes it a proper Manchester pub lunch.

The Marble Arch on Rochdale Road, north of the Northern Quarter, is a Grade II listed Victorian pub built in 1888. Inside are glazed brick walls, a decorative frieze listing drinks, a barrel-vaulted ceiling and a cream and blue mosaic floor that slopes downhill from the Rochdale Road end. The tiles were covered over for years and have since been restored, and CAMRA lists the interior as of outstanding national historic importance.

Marble Brewery started at the back of the pub in 1997, and the Marble Arch is still its flagship, with six cask and eight keg lines plus real cider. Marble beers go into the cooking too: the Sunday roast has featured beef marinated in Marble's own Manchester Bitter and pork belly with cider gravy, with a spinach and pine nut strudel for vegetarians. The pub is family and dog friendly and has an enclosed beer garden.

Sam's Chop House was founded by Samuel Studd and has served British food in Manchester city centre for more than 150 years. It is still an independent family business, in a red-brick building on Back Pool Fold, just off Cross Street. A life-sized bronze statue of the painter L.S. Lowry, who was a regular, stands at the bar in the spot he liked best.

The menu is built on British classics, and the Corned Beef Hash, which takes ten days to prepare, is the dish Sam's is famous for. Steak and kidney pudding, steaks and chops sit alongside it, and there is a dedicated Sunday menu for a traditional Manchester Sunday lunch. The wine list is chosen by sommelier George Bergier, with local ales and cask beers on the bar.

10 Tib Lane is a cocktail bar and restaurant in a slim three-storey townhouse just off Cross Street in Manchester city centre. The ground floor is the bar, with intimate dining rooms upstairs in exposed brick and soft pastel colours. Classic cocktails made with care and a list of natural wines make it as good for a drink as for a meal.

The kitchen cooks seasonal, sharing-style plates with fresh, locally sourced produce and a French influence through the week. On Sundays the roast takes over, with dishes such as 32-day dry-aged sirloin, herb-stuffed porchetta, chicken supreme and a mushroom Wellington. Truffled cauliflower cheese with a pine nut crumb, braised red cabbage and buttered greens have all featured on the side. It opens from midday until 10pm on Sundays.

Blacklock is a modern British chop house in the basement of a Grade II listed warehouse on Peter Street that was once home to a textile merchant. The meat comes from Philip Warren, an award-winning farmer and butcher in Cornwall, and British beef is dry-aged to deepen its flavour. Through the week it is cooked simply over a charcoal grill using vintage Blacklock irons, with cocktails from a trolley and wine on tap.

On Sundays only the Sunday roast menu is served, and it runs from lunch into the evening. Whole joints are hung and roasted over open coals, with beef rump, lamb leg and pork loin, or a barbecued cauliflower for vegetarians. Every plate comes with crispy roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, seasonal vegetables and unlimited gravy, with cauliflower cheese as an extra.

The Refuge is the restaurant and bar inside the Kimpton Clocktower Hotel on Oxford Street, one of Manchester's best-known landmarks. The building was designed by Alfred Waterhouse as offices for the Refuge Assurance Company and completed in 1891, and its 66-metre clock tower was added in 1912. It is Grade II* listed, and its French Renaissance and Baroque detail makes a grand setting for Sunday lunch.

The kitchen uses British ingredients with global influences, serving small plates through the week and roasts on Sundays. The Sunday menu has featured grass-fed rump of Lancashire beef, half a roast Cumbrian chicken, Yorkshire porchetta and a vegan Wellington, with a sharing platter for the table. There is even a bowl of roast potatoes for dogs.