MasterChef winner opens Little Beast in Manchester

Little Beast, a produce-led small plates restaurant from MasterChef: The Professionals winner Dan Merriman, has opened at Medlock Square in Manchester, on the Etihad Stadium campus.

The 105-cover restaurant serves lunch and dinner from Wednesday to Sunday, with a menu built around British ingredients treated simply: roasted carrots with garlic yoghurt and spiced dukkah, and cod loin with curry sauce and fermented English lettuce are among the dishes. The opening lands the same week the AA published its 2026 rosette awards, a reminder of how crowded the UK's small-plates and produce-led scene has become.

Merriman won MasterChef: The Professionals in 2024 while working as senior sous chef at the Blackbull Inn in Old Langho, Lancashire. He grew up in Droitwich, Worcestershire, and has spent the two years since the win building a development-chef role rather than rushing into a solo opening.

A MasterChef winner's biggest bet yet: not one restaurant, but a whole stadium campus of food.

A stadium campus built around food

Medlock Square is a wider entertainment development sitting between the Etihad Stadium and Co-op Live, built around a 401-room Radisson Blu hotel. Merriman oversees the food across the site as development chef, including café-bar Blend and the Three Rivers Brasserie and Bar, alongside running Little Beast's kitchen day to day.

The scale is unusual for a chef two years out of a television final: most MasterChef winners open a single site, if they open one at all, rather than take on a multi-venue development role. Merriman's remit puts him closer to a hotel group's food director than a chef-patron.

Small plates, big footprint

Medlock Square's next addition is entertainment rather than food: a resident production of Mamma Mia! The Party is due to arrive at the site in late 2027, giving the development a second draw beyond match days and gig nights at the neighbouring venues.

For Manchester, Little Beast adds to a small-plates scene already shaped by openings across the city centre, and gives the Etihad campus a restaurant built to hold its own outside stadium hours rather than serve only ticket-holders.

Whether a 105-cover site can keep a tight, produce-led menu consistent at that volume is the harder question, one the restaurant will only answer once the stadium crowds, not the opening-week press, start filling the room.