The First Chop

First chop has closed down :(gutting! However I have not been to its newly name: Ramsbottom tap as of yet

You know when you are going away and you don’t want to have lots of stuff in the fridge to go out of date??? That might have been my justification to Mr. Snarky to get out of the house and go for a wander. Ramsbottom was suggested to me by Jonny Q with a number of options for lunch and it is nearby, so off we went.
The drive was lovely and we happened to arrive as the Ramsbottom Festival was in full swing. Loads of people walking around and it is such a cute town! In fact, I may have talked about how lovely it was so much that Mr. Snarky started looking at properties there :). Anyway, finding parking was a little tricky, but we did eventually and it was free!
We had driven by The First Chop and I remembered it was one of the places recommended, so we walked in for lunch. There is a small amount of seating on the ground floor, but more seating downstairs. It was quite popular for groups having drinks and with the selection, I could understand why! We managed to grab a small table on the ground floor so I don’t know what downstairs looks like, but I quite liked the feeling of the area on the ground floor.
It is also quite the family place as there were a number of families that had wandered in with their children to have lunch. On one side of the menu, there are sharing plates and on the other side are their burgers. There was another small menu on the table of sandwiches if the other items are not of interest. Of course, I was going to have a burger because they sounded wonderful! I went with the Bacon Burger, but was a bit skeptical of the onion marmalade. Mr. Snarky went with the Bacon and Burt’s Blue Burger.
We had arrived before it got really busy, but we did end up waiting quite a long time for our food. One of the staff members did come over, apologized, and reassured us that our burgers would be out shortly. When they did come out, there was a whole lotta food! The burger is quite large and starting it can be a bit of a task, but it was a very good burger! Juicy and… the onion marmalade that I was skeptical about… delicious and really went with the burger. I liked their homemade coleslaw, but the chips… well our chips were so dark with seasoning that there were a couple of times where I kind of choked a bit on it. Not sure what the seasoning was, but I think I would have opted for the onion rings. Mr. Snarky liked his burger, but had one large chunk of blue cheese on part of the burger and said that the cheese overpowered everything else, but as he ate through the burger, he discovered that there was no more cheese. Other than that, we did enjoy our burgers and I would love to go again for drinks :)

I can’t say I’m ready to move to Ramsbottom but I do wish this place was within easy walking distance of my house! In fact there seems to be all sorts of fine foodie places in this quaint area north of Manchester — the Mousetrap a few doors down and the Hearth of Ram and Eagle and Child just around the corner. Renowned street food traders Levanter have also just opened up an exciting looking tapas joint!
So all is well and good up here but it turns out First Chop have been here for years — and they really have it down. The vibe is a mix of British pub/​Belgian Beer Bar/​American Craft beer destination (friends and regular readers will know this is exactly why I love this place now).
They do of course have a great selection of their own ‘First Chop’ beers on tap — with the FCB (so good for a 3.6% beer that I had to have 2 pints), DOC and SYL (a great porter) all on tap with a load of lagers and Belgian beers. Prices were pretty reasonable compared with Manchester city centre and they also had some pretty sweet bottles on offer.
We actually chose to go in because we wanted lunch and wow what an eclectic menu. My wife had the pittas and dips with a courgette side while I went for one of their immense burgers — the burger, bacon, mozarella and all the toppings was just incredible (£12.95) and I can see why they’re so proud of them on the menu. There was so much food to choose from that you could go back every day for months and have something different every time!
We went with our 1 year old daughter on a Sunday afternoon showing it was child friendly and with loads of seating up and downstairs it still felt quaint and personal. Staff were really friendly — just a great experience and one I hope to repeat soon!