Stockport Venues 3 to 4

Continuing my journey through the Stockport suburbs brings you to the area of Heaton Moor and the thriving street of Shaw Road with its plethora of restaurants and bars. At the Heaton Moor Road end, you find Leoni’s Italian restaurant who also owned a short-lived pizzeria on the other side of the street. In the building where the restaurant now resides there used to be a Kro Bar branch, their first outside the city centre which ran from 2008 to 2016 before a short stint then as cocktail bar Tusk.

A smidge further down you reach a Stockport institution Kushoom Koly, a curry house that first opened in 1971, known locally as the ‘Kush’. We attended there in late 2018 and the owner Faruk Uddin made a beeline for us as ‘newbies’ to the establishment and was a thoroughly lovely chap and we had a very fine meal. I surmise we would have returned many more times, but unimaginable tragedy struck when the owner’s son Jordan was killed in a road traffic accident and the proprietor felt he could not carry on and the restaurant closed for good in 2019.

  

The Kush. Image Credit facebook.com

On the other side of the street there are two separate ale bars called Pale and Bottle respectively. Beyond those you find Pokusevski’s Mediterranean restaurant which has expanded from its original tiny café when it first opened in 2004. It is an inviting place with dangerously delicious cakes and their own home made ginger tea. It was one of the first places to open locally during the pandemic and I recall our palpable excitement in those surreal times for something as abundantly simple as a takeaway coffee!

Next to there is Hula, a tiki late night dive bar which I have never frequented, however within this location the music venue called the Blue Cat used to reside.  A local chap called Danny Donnelly, a former electrician, spotted a large gap in the Stockport live music scene and bravely opened up the venue in 1996. The premise was to provide a platform for upcoming bands as an antidote to the gruel diet of tribute acts at other local sites and they actually instilled this ethos by having a no covers policy in place. With the opening of the venue, he actually kickstarted the subsequent regeneration of Shaw Road.

The Blue Cat. Image Credit Manchester Evening News.com

Luminaries such as The Blossoms, Johnny Marr, Nick Harper, Ian McNabb, Kiki Dee and 1975 have played there and local acts Haven (from Heaton Moor) and Isobel Heyworth were supplied opportunities to make a name for themselves. Comedy nights were also staged, and John Bishop, Alan Carr, Sarah Millican and Jack Whitehall have graced the stage. He also set up his own record label named Out of the Blue.

As a result of Stockport’s inflexible licensing laws with their 11.30 curfew, the venue was sadly forced to close for good in 2015 after a 19-year residency. The final band to play there was the band Man Made featuring Johnny Marr’s son Nile. I never had the chance to frequent as this was in the pre-Manchester Jimmy period.  

A couple of doors away is Stockport Cassidy’s Bar which was opened by a chap called Martin Cassidy in 2004. It has an odd lay out with a split level from the entrance up to the main bar. There is sport constantly booming on the many screens and they also have music on at the weekend. There have also been karaoke performances with one previous event led by Blossoms frontman Tom Ogden. On the night of our visit in 2019 a local singer called Sally Walters was playing.

Cassidy’s Bar. Image Credit The UK

On a monthly basis the Stockport Heaton Moor Market takes over Shaw Road with its numerous market stalls. On one occasion at the tail end of 2021 there was a set from the Heatons & Reddish Ukelele band who practice every Friday at the local United Reform Church.