Manchester Food & Drink Festival 2015 Launches in Style!
| 15th September 2015
Thursday saw the launch of this years’ Manchester Food & Drink Festival at the newly reopened Corn Exchange. The venue was not quite complete but that didn’t stop Manchester’s finest turning up in full force. The Exchange looks as stunning as ever with new restaurants Wahaca, Pho, Cosy Club and Banyan joining old timers Salvis, Tampopo, Pizza Express and Zizzi with others on the way. So it seems retail is out, and restaurants are most definitely in having taken over the entire building.
This 18th Festival embraces these exciting new developments in Manchester; the launch showcasing the wide variety of food and drink on offer. We tried the most wonderful frozen Margaritas from Thomasina Miers Mexican restaurant Wahaca with 100% agave Olmeca Altos Tequila (admittedly rather too quickly resulting in a little brain freeze); the most beautiful fresh and colourful canapes including their famous Buffalo Mozzarella from Salvis; and a whole selection of garlicky dough delights from Pizza Express.
Over at the Hub in Albert Square the weather couldn’t have been more glorious. The main Festival Bar offers over 100 beers, but fear not wine drinkers as Vin Van Voom are back again, that’s me sorted! The Hub food offer has been split into two halves in order to cater to our ever growing street food scene, this first half (to 15th September) offering great value tasty bits from Diamond Dogs, Yakumama, Viet Shack and Chaat Cart to name a few. The second half (16th – 20th September) including favourites Tampopo, The Mac Factory, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen and Not Dogs.
I attended my first event of the festival, Three Wine Women featuring Kate Goodman of West Didsbury’s Reserve Wines, Jane Dowler from Evuna, and The Guardian’s wine columnist Fiona Beckett. The evening was a complete sell out and an absolute delight. These women know their wine, and the audience tasted their way through sparkling wines with Kate, the best Spanish reds with Jane, and the absolute revelation that was white wine with cheese from Fiona. I’m a complete convert and will be checking out her website Matching Food & Wine from here in.
This was followed up by Saturdays’ Bio-Historic Banquet with Robert Owen Brown at the Manchester Museum. Billed as a dining experience unlike any other, diners enjoyed six courses (sorry it was more like three with a couple of canapes thrown in to start) using foods grown by the Biospheric Studio, the aquaponic technology was especially fascinating with plants cultivated from fish nutrients in specifically built greenhouses. Highlights were the setting obviously, eating a hot rock baked oyster underneath a giant sperm whale will be hard to top; yet service was quite shaky and disorganised, which was a shame as on the whole Rob did us all proud catering to the vast numbers on show.
Here’s to this next week then MFDF 2015!