Dinner & A Movie at Manchester Printworks

by Charl Pearce

You can’t beat an old school, lets get back to basics, mother of all first dates… dinner and a movie.  Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not as though I don’t like the planned in advance types date or the adventures, I love packing up a bag and disappearing with Dan for a night, even if just for a few days.  Waking up in another bed, away from the day to day chores of everyday life such as washing dishes and deciding between a colours and white wash is a great way to detach and just get away and make time for each other.  Especially when your partner works all the hours that god sends in an industry that requires them being absent from your life during sociable hours.

When everybody else is making dinner reservations with friends or a loved one, relaxing over a glass of wine and looking over the menu on those “special” days of the year such as Christmas or Valentines, Dan will in the back of restaurant, preparing and cooking your food.  Which he loves.  He loves putting together dishes and has a real passion for cooking.  What I don’t love so much is missing out on being sociable with Dan during the hours that are sociable for other couples.

Friday and Saturday are a write off, weekdays we pass like ships in the night and we rely heavily on his one night off in the week and our stolen Sundays together in which we manage to catch up on life together, which when you’re adult doesn’t always equal a date day or night.

With Dan predictably working Valentine’s evening, an afternoon in Manchester the Sunday before the “big day” without the overpriced menus and back to back reservations was a great idea for some “us” time.  With Manchester in full throws of northern February weather, we happily stumbled out of the blustery cold and into the sheltered treasure trove of The Printworks with its eateries and entertainment for dinner and a movie.

Dan has never been to Wagamama (I kid you not) so, whilst we were in the vicinity and before heading to Odeon for our afternoon screening of Trainspotting 2, we found ourselves in a warm and bustling downstairs booth at The Printworks Wagamama.

One Buddha beer and a signature Tropical fruit juice (mango, apple and orange), we filled ourselves full of the best that Wagamama has to offer.  Fluffy asian steamed buns stuffed with pork belly and panko apple, crispy fried squid dusted with shichimi and tasty fried duck dumplings served made for the perfect accompaniment to a steaming bowl of chilli steak ramen and chicken raisukaree.   The raisukaree came highly recommended and is a  mild, creamy coconut and citrus curry, with chicken, mangetout, peppers, red and spring onions. served with white rice, a sprinkle of mixed sesame seeds, red chillies, coriander and fresh lime and has just the right amount of spice for my delicate tongue and introduced some much needed colour into a grey Manchester afternoon.

Full up on tasty japanese food (but still with room for Pick&Mix), we embarked on an overdue visit to the Odeon to see the eagerly awaited T2 Trainspotting.  With around a million screens, Odeon Printworks was a great venue to catch up with Renton, Sickboy, Spud and co 20 years after the original film, which followed the coming of age of  addicts in an economically depressed area of Scotland, was released.

Two decades on and director Danny Boyle brought Trainspotting screeching into 2017 showing an ever unfolding tale of how the much loved but troubled characters of old had evolved against a backdrop of a culturally changing Edinburgh.

There’s some real laugh out loud moments in T2 combined with some raw, hard hitting and poignant scenes which are reminiscent of the grittiness a generation of people loved about Trainspotting way back when I was only 10 years old.

First there is an opportunity & then a betrayal.

 

T2 is hardly about become a become a touchstone movie for a new generation of cinemagoers who think Trainspotting is nothing more than men with rucksacks photographing your Virgin Pendelino to London, but for those who were hard hit by the its predecessor, the opportunity to expand on the original film has not betrayed its roots.

Feeling nostalgic, we finished off the last of fizzy cola bottles and stumbled into german bavarian drinking hole, Bierkeller for an icy cold beer (or 2) to talk animatedly about our favourite parts of the movie before heading home to the Sunday night routine of laundry.  Romance, huh?

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