I visited cool UK town dubbed 'the new Berlin' to see if it lives up to the hype

Needless to say, I was skeptical when I first heard claims that a town near Manchester was “the new Berlin”. But over a long weekend away, I lost count of the number of locals who jokingly compared Stockport to the German capital, and while tongue-in-cheek, there is some truth to it.

A decade ago, I spent a year living in Berlin. My memories are mostly taken up with eating kebabs, dancing to techno into the early hours and beyond, and struggling to understand lectures in German. Underlying it all was a pervasive sense that you could do anything.

As a student, that mostly meant smoking indoors in bars and clubs, and a spot of skinny-dipping. But in Berlin, anything feels possible. Berliners are plucky and independent and bounce back from hardship. In Stockport, at least in the suddenly-bougie town centre, you can now feel that too.

The town in the south of Greater Manchester has a bad reputation, but over the past few years, this has been changing. Starting with the opening of Where the Light Gets In, a fancy restaurant in an old Victorian tobacco warehouse, the town centre has quickly become well worth a visit.

The restaurant grows some of its veg on the roof of a shopping centre car park, and sources the rest from some of the best farmers in the country. I had a set menu, “A Study in Crab”, where all but one of the dishes included crab. Having never eaten crab before, now I am a convert. The potato salad, drenched in green nettle mayo and tiny flowers, was a work of art. This must be what heroin feels like.

As the wave of crustacean-induced euphoria started to fade, I left desperately plotting how and where I could get my next fix of crab. Do they even sell it in fishmongers back home? Or will I have to go to another fancy restaurant and shell out? Three decades of life not eating crab, utterly wasted. You have to go to Stockport and eat at Where the Light Gets In.

So far, the regeneration of the town centre has focused on the Underbanks, a historic high street now home to sourdough bakeries, trendy bars, and independent shops. We stopped in Rare Mags, where they sell style magazines from Tokyo, even though most of their customers don’t read Japanese, and black filter coffee from Cardiff roastery Hard Lines to sip while you browse.

My hotel near the station had a view of the Stockport Pyramid, which is a bit like getting a hotel room in Paris with a view of the Eiffel Tower. The pyramid is home to an Indian restaurant and was made famous in a song by local musician Antony Szmierek. It’s not conclusive proof of a link, but I first heard 'The Great Pyramid of Stockport' on FluxFM, a popular radio station among young Berliners.

You might not be able to find a techno club that lets you in the door after a three-hour wait at 7am. However, Stockport does have Holy Diver, a rock bar that stays open until 2am with a giant painting of Ozzy Osbourne on the wall and riotous karaoke every last Friday of the month. And there is plenty of house music, like in the Bruk natural wine bar or nearby Ōdiobā listening bar.

On Friday night there was even a DJ on the street with a group of people dancing to disco. This was because on the last Friday of every month, Stockport’s town centre is the place to be. Chatting to a group of lads outside one pub, only one of them actually lived in the town and the rest had travelled across Greater Manchester, just for the monthly Foodie Friday extravaganza.

Dozens of street food vendors take over the market square, and the terraces of the bars are all packed. We ate halloumi fries and drank espresso martinis out of plastic cocktail glasses. There were several people sitting on the bridge over the Underbanks in the sunshine chomping on street food and drinking beer, just like the bustling Admiralbrücke over the canal in Kreuzberg.

Regeneration hasn’t hit parts of Stockport outside the town centre yet. There are still plenty of betting shops and dilapidated buildings. But in fairness, few tourists venture out to Berlin's Moabit or Marzahn, where you'll find poverty and empty buildings.

But these are what made the German city great in my eyes, as plucky adventurers turned abandoned sites into giant techno clubs and cheap rents attracted creatives. This same thing is happening in Stockport, but instead of the Wall falling, the town is benefitting from a huge £2-billion regeneration creating thousands of new homes, places to work and spend time.

In some ways, Stockport, which was recently named one of the UK's best places to visit, is even better than Berlin. You can walk anywhere, instead of relying on a 30-minute ride on the S-Bahn. The friendly locals have a classic northern charm, instead of the infamous Berliner Schnauze that can come across a bit rude to Brits. I might lose some German friends writing this, but the beer is better — at least what we drank in the Runaway Brewery.

German brews are staunchly traditional and often a choice of pilsner or pilsner. In the Runaway Brewery, where they have “Weird Weekends”, you can get pilsner or barley wine or sour beer or a “pomodoro” with tomato, salt, fennel and chilli. And wood-fired pizza is cooked in the garden.

Highlights of the weekend included getting pastries for breakfast from the Sticky Fingers bakery and dinner from Cantaloupe. This outstanding restaurant has top-quality food, like rabbit stew or anchovies wrapped in sage leaves and fried in batter, as well as lovely, down-to-earth service. However, I admit the Hat Museum doesn’t quite compare to Museum Island or the Pergamon.

It’s still the North, and you can still enjoy a pint of Bass in the Wellington pub listening to a cover band play ‘Sweet Caroline’. Although sitting outside Thread, a bar on the market square that sells Belgian and German beer, I did sip a pilsner while my girlfriend went shopping. She bought a greetings card that proclaimed Stockport as ‘Das neue Berlin’ — so then it must be true.

This press trip was organised with the help of Stockport Council and made possible with funding and support from Totally Stockport, Stockport’s business improvement district.