Free Food in Manchester: #Tweet4aTable 2014

Hey kittens, today’s blog post is pretty exciting. In fact, it’s about free food. FREE FOOD. Tell me that’s not brightened your day? And luckily, I’m posting this just in time for you to get yourselves some free lunch, dinner and dessert in Manchester today and tomorrow. Oooh, I’m good to you, but not as good as The Co-operative Food have been in rustling me up the most delicious dinner I’ve had all week.

Last night I popped along to Exchange Square, Manchester for the first night of #Tweet4aTable in our hometown. The venue itself is a purpose build pop-up restaurant serving American style food. Situated right between Selfridges, The Triangle and Manchester Arndale, it’s a super central location and right in the centre of everything. The best thing is, there’s only one way of paying; via tweet!

All you need to do to win yourself a free dinner for yourself and up to three friends is follow @Tweet4aTable on Twitter and tweet them with the reason you’d like to win a slap up dinner for free, then cross your fingers for good luck. It’s a pretty cool concept and as an avid Tweeter myself (y’all can follow me here if you don’t already), I was all over that like a kitten on a halloumi burger… Which incidentally is what I chose from the delicious sounding menu.

Sitting in the rare September sunshine in central Manchester, the Tweet4aTable restaurant was pretty sheltered and aside from the gorgeous view of some of Manchester’s most famous buildings, you could easily forget you were in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the city. To start, we chose from a drink from four American sodas (cream soda, cloudy lemonade, orangeade and peach soda) – note the American red party cups! – and were presented with a huge basket of nachos topped with salsa, guacamole, sour cream and melted cheese. Sharing these between two, it was a really generous portion and I had to put some aside to save myself for the main event…

As a veggie, I was pleasantly surprised to see several non-meat options on the menu (sometimes even at the best restaurants, vegetarians are palmed off with only one option, so to have a choice at a free meal was a huge bonus). I decided to go for the Hal and Pino Burger, an halloumi burger with meditarian vegetables, jalapeno coleslaw, tomato and chilli chutney. The burger came on a fresh ciabatta roll with two huge slabs of the most delicious grilled cheese you will ever try. I kid you not. Try it.

Most of my friends went for what seemed to be the most popular choice; the Head Honcho. This was a pulled pork pile up with BBQ pulled pork, guacamole, salsa, sour cream and sweet fried onions. Again, the portion was huge, and each meal came with a choice of four different sides (naked fries, spring onion cheese fries, coleslaw fries or onion rings) which is pretty cool. Afterwards. there were also samplings of desserts including lemon panna cotta, cappuccino sundaes and brownies.

The consensus all round was that the food was incredible quality – although The Co-operative Food is known for it’s high quality produce anyway, it was quite surprising that our dinner was so much better than some Northern Quarter restaurants I’ve tried of similar offerings. The staff were proper friendly and talked through all the options with us. The coolest thing, however, I think is the concept behind tweeting for a table. It does what is says on the tin, and as one the first restaurants ran by social media interactions, I’m excited to see how this sets an example for future campaigns.

So kittens, will you be tweeting for a table in Manchester this week? Bookings are now open for lunch and dinner (sit down and takeaway meals) both today and tomorrow (September 18th and 19th), so make sure you follow The Co-operative Food’s Tweet 4 a Table on Twitter and #Tweet4aTable for your chance to win!