Muslim’s Guide to Newcastle

Admin
Oct 1, 2020
3 min read

It might be scary to navigate an unknown city for the first time especially for Muslims who are concerned about how to get halal food and access to prayer rooms.

Artists impression of the Newcastle Central Mosque. Source

Halal Groceries: Mostly in Fenham

The Muslim community in Newcastle is pretty well established. You can find halal food really easily.

The Fenham area is occupied with halal grocery shops and butchers. You can find a lot of Halal grocery shops along Stanhope Street. Just choose which shop you wanna go in! There is also a shop called Najeb, which is quite big & people say it's quite cheap, but I don't really like it because the shop is too crowded.

Fenham is quite close to Newcastle University and only 15 minutes away by foot from the city centre. For example, Pamir Halal Meat on Stanhope Street is one butcher that sells halal chicken, beef and lamb. There are also other grocery shops such as Brighton Food Store and Newcastle Halal Food Store that sells a variety of food. You can find sausages, nuggets and spices that are all halal. You can get some halal option in the Asda at Fenham too, but it has limited choices.

If you live nearer to the Quayside and Northumbria University, it might be easier to go to Morrisons Supermarket near the Gateshead area. Morrisons Supermarket has halal meat in their World’s Section. There is also a halal butcher (Heaton Halal Superstore) which is a bus ride from Morrisons.

Pics of the Fenham area. Left: Brighton Food Store, Right: Pamir Food Store. Source: Google maps

Eateries

During the days when you’re lazy to cook, you do not have to go far to dine at halal restaurants. There are a lot of halal eateries in the city centre. Some of these restaurants even have halal certifications.

List of known halal eateries:

The Dispensary Coffee 💕
Chilli Padi
Eat4less
Manjaros 💕
Chicken Cottage
Chickenlicious
Nandos (Newgate Branch)
Red Mezze
Chaiwalla

*Some of my favourite ones are noted with a heart

Plus, you can get student discount on selected restaurants if you're an ISOC member!

Left: Chilli padi, Top right: Manjaros (pasta), Bottom right: The Dispensary Coffee (Chicken waffle).

Mosques & Prayer Rooms

Both Newcastle University and Northumbria University have designated prayer rooms or surau on their campus grounds.

The Newcastle Univeristy’s Islamic Society (ISOC) has a prayer room at the King George IV Building in main campus. The prayer room is only accessible to students of the university as you need your student ID to open the doors. Its open to public actually, but you might need to wait for Newcastle student to come in.

However the Faculty of Medical Science is quite far away from the main campus, if you are in a hurry or need to pray in between classes, you might want to consider praying inside the school itself.

There is an empty corner or space nearby the Fell Cluster that you can use to pray. You have to walk down all the way down the Fell Cluster corridor where the toilets are, and the empty space is on the right of the ladies’ toilets. It is nearby an emergency exit door. However, the door to the Fell Cluster corridor is locked after 6pm.

There are also prayer mats in the coffee room on the second floor of Leech Building so you can go there to pray! While you're there you can heat up your food as well!

Other than that, there is Newcastle Central Mosque that is located in Fenham.

For prayer time, it is best if you get the timetable from the main prayer room or if you join the ISOC society, you will be added into the WhatsApp group. They will forward the prayer timetable every month.