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Dining options in Manchester and Liverpool vary from smart cafés offering Modern British, Continental, or global fare to world-class international restaurants for all budgets. Manchester has one of Britain's biggest Chinatowns, and locals also favor the 40-odd Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Indian restaurants along Wilmslow Road in Rusholme, a mile south of the city center, known as Curry Mile.
One local dish that has survived is Bakewell pudding (never called "tart" in these areas, as its imitations are elsewhere in England). Served with custard or cream, the pudding—a pastry covered with jam and a thin layer of almond-flavor filling—is a real joy of visiting Bakewell.
Financed by onetime Barcelona soccer legend and Manchester City FC manager Pep Guardiola, this Catalonian restaurant pulls no punches when it comes to contemporary cooking, with dishes courtesy of two Michelin-star chef Paco Pérez. The unifying overall concept is "tastets"—small tastes of food with greater complexity than tapas, some cooked in a charcoal oven, including butifarra, a Catalan Duroc pork sausage. Highly theatrical, TAST is an ideal choice for very special occasions.
