The best places with air con in Manchester

This canal-side beer emporium is one of the best stocked in the city, with 27 keg lines, six cask pumps and seemingly hundreds of bottles and cans. It’s great on a sunny day for two reasons: one being water-side boozing, the other being their absolutely cracking climate control, if you want to head inside to cool down.

This traditional Spanish tapas place in the heart of the Northern Quarter is also incredibly European when it comes to air conditioning – in that they actually have some, and it’s functional. Pretend you’re on holiday with their hearty, classic tapas dishes, paellas, Spanish wines and crisp, artificial breeze.

Gullivers – the green-fronted boozer on Oldham Street – dates back to 1865, and quite frankly it still feels pretty olde worlde in there, even though they’ve had the occasional refurb. What doesn’t feel olde worlde is their extremely effective air con, that’ll keep you refreshed while you nurse a cold, cold pint of Manchester Craft Lager, prop up the bar or watch some music in their upstairs gig area.

The vast new food hall on First Street isn’t just well supplied with independent food traders (from Mughli to Burger & Beyond) and a vast outdoor seating area, it is also well supplied with some seriously refreshing air con. So as well as being a new addition to Manchester’s food scene, this student-friendly spot is perfect for hosting fussy family members or groups of friends with different preferences.

If you need to take cooling down to professional lengths, head to Withington’s all-vegan dessert parlour Ice Shack. They serve cakes, shakes and ice creams in a variety of old school flavours. With the likes of banoffee, peanut butter and rocky road ice creams and cakes (both gluten and gluten-free) loaded with childhood favourites like Jaffa Cake and Kinder Bueno, you’re likely to find something to satisfy your plant-based sweet tooth. The A/C packs a punch too. Icy by name, icy by nature.

This city centre pub run by esoteric local brewery Pomona Island Brew Co has done an amazing job of turning a new unit into a lush old pub, full of dark panelling, brass fittings and vintage glass lighting. It’s also a haven to escape a too-hot city centre day, because as well as everything else, the air con is top-tier.

Part of the Common/Nell’s/The Beagle extended cinematic universe, Port Street Beer House – no prizes for guessing where it’s located – is two floors, and two terraces of local craft ales and lesser-spotted lagers. Whether you’re into your fizzy German Pilsners, or your hazy IPAs brewed on a Mancunian industrial estate, you can do it in the comforting surrounds of a thoroughly air conditioned taproom.

Opposite Manchester Central and across an ornamental pond from The Bridgewater Hall seems an unlikely spot for a modern food hall to make sense, but make sense Society does. With a short but perfectly formed list of traders including Chaat Cart, Noi Quattro and Yoki Social Table, and beers by Hebden Bridge’s finest brewery Vocation, it’s a consistently crowd-pleasing spot for some pre-culture refreshments. And speaking of refreshments, they very much know when to blast the air con.

Over at Terrace NQ, they know exactly what their USP is. With entrances on both Edge Street and Thomas Street, they straddle two of the buzziest streets in the Northern Quarter, making it a mighty contender in the rooftop bar game. If it’s too hot up there though, their cavernous, industrial chic bar is reliably refrigerated.