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The Cheetham Hill eatery is the UK’s only horror themed restaurant and in this corner of the city, it’s All Hallow’s Eve all year round. That means diners can enjoy dressing up and getting a friendly frightening whenever they want to eat, something that owner Dave says brings in all sorts of different customers.

The Hellfire Club and their hearse

"It’s a fun thing that people want to do these days, instead of being all straight-laced in restaurants. There’s even people who come in capes and basques and things like that.

"And it’s not just one sort of person. We have a phenomenally different range of people come, from students to engineers to nurses… every walk of life you can imagine."

A horror restaurant isn’t the most obvious idea, but it’s one that struck Dave as particularly fitting for his step into the culinary world, inspired by the building itself, as he explains.

"I’d bought the building and was trying to work out what to do with it. I thought about converting into flats but thought it’d do better as a going concern. It’s a really weird shape and very gothy.

Wine and die? Selections from the drinks list

"Then I was in Ibiza, sat in my mate’s café, and I looked up at the walls to see all these montages of horror movies – Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, stuff like that. I just thought, that’s it, a horror restaurant.

"The truth is that it’s not in the best area, so we had to try and attract people to it, and I thought why not try this?"

But Dave’s imagination wasn’t the only reason for the horror theme. There was also the matter of the building being haunted.

As for the food, Dave says it’s a modern European menu, though the names of the dishes aren’t the usual restaurant fare.

"We have a lot of plays on the word steak, but there’s more than that. There’s Belly Of The Beast, Soup Of The Dead, Cannibal Holocaust – but they’re burgers, squid, lamb shanks, that sort of thing."

Scary it may be, but thankfully, it sounds like the horror theme is kept firmly away from the plate.