Manchester, UK
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From a culinary perspective, Manchester has developed a fine crop of acclaimed eateries in recent years, including a handful in or very near the Gay Village. The quintessential gay date spot is Taurus, right along Canal Street, a diverting place to eat dinner, sip wine, or grab a bite of cheesecake and a cup of coffee for dessert. The restaurant serves tasty, affordable international foods and sandwiches, such as risotto, duck-and-pear salad, and mussels with white wine sauce. Another good bet nearby is trendy Tribeca, a slick space serving fine cocktails and upscale nouvelle British fare.

The Gay Village is adjacent to Manchester's vibrant Chinatown, where you'll find one of the most popular Asian eateries in town, Yang Sing, which has been serving up-market Chinese fare since the early 1980s. If it's cheap and simple ethnic food you're seeking in the gay area, just stroll along Bloom Street, the narrow lane paralleling Canal Street, and you'll discover a number of inexpensive fast-food spots serving fish-and-chips, pizza, kebabs, and the like - one of the best is Safad Middle Eastern Cuisine, which has a delicious chicken shawarma. Safad, like most of the places along here, is open into the wee hours each evening.

Elsewhere in Manchester, a number of great eateries await. For some of the best Indian fare in the city, duck into Shimla Pinks, which serves wonderfully fragrant and tasty curries and tandoori dishes in an elegant setting. One of the smartest restaurants in the city is Obsidian, a chic bar and grill serving such inventive creations as grilled Scottish salmon with beet-root fondant, creamy polenta, and a tangy goat cheese sauce. Another trendy spot earning plenty of kudos of late is Room, a snazzy mod-Brit restaurant where you might sample aged rib-eye steak with a classic peppercorn sauce, or pigeon pie with vanilla-scented figs.

If you watched the original Queer As Folk, you may recognize Manchester's bustling Gay Village, a five-block strip set along a restored canal on the southern edge of the City Centre. Then again, the Gay Village has gentrified considerably since Queer As Folk filmed its popular series here in 1999 and 2000. At that time, cruising and even public sex were relatively commonplace down along the banks of the canal and in some of the alleys behind the bars.

These days, some people even grumble that Manchester's Gay Village has become a victim of its own success. It can be awfully crowded in these parts, especially on weekend evenings, when the Canal Street bar strip is overrun with screaming teenagers, many of them straight. There's little tension even on these crazy weekend evenings, but if you're over 30 or disinclined toward massive crowds, you might want to bar-hop in Manchester on weekdays.
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