DIDSBURY VILLAGE FARM SHOP. I want one in the city centre. I want one in Manchester Airport.
This is an extension of the farmer's market but taken on to the High Street on a permanent site.
This week and next is Manchester Histories Festival. One of the ambitions of such an event is to build a sense of place, a sense of identity. This in turn - you'd hope - builds pride and should lead to a more confident and contented population. Long term of course.
Food is one of the great identifiers.
Yet through a Northern, in particular it seems, fear of food failure, we seem to have forgotten that. Maybe it's a concern that the indigenous food culture of the region, which went underground for perhaps a century, wasn't worthy. It's only in recent years we've begun to value what we have.
London Bus In Manchester AirportThis 'fear' possibly explains the failure in Manchester Airport to do what every airport in Europe seems to do - and I include Aberdeen in this - and that's show off and sell our best food and drink in a deli concession as a tourist souvenir. Instead we get a WH Smith in Manchester Airport selling London buses, Beefeaters and other Metropolitan memorabilia, which if nothing else must confuse passengers - "Eh, so was the plane diverted?"
Didsbury Village Farm Shop for hams and condiments and tasty fancies would work a treat there, once they've sourced a good range of North Western cheeses and some potted and smoked fish.
It'd work a treat in the city centre as well. I'd never be out of the place. Put a unit next to Salvi's in Exchange Square, or in the empty shop formally occupied by Swarovski, on Exchange Street and it'd be rammed.
Mine, all mine, happy customer rushes from the shop
What Didsbury Village Farm Shop has done is provide a mix of deli with proper butchers on a tiny site. The hyperlocal, 'we're genuine and from round here', marketing is cunning but also meaningful. This is an extension of the farmer's market but taken on to the High Street on a permanent site.
With their own meats as well.
Pete Ward, who was manning the tills on the Saturday of my visit is a ruddy cheeked farmer by trade, from an agricultural estate in Adlington with a name that seems dreamt up by a tourist board, Cherry Tree Farm.
Pete Ward, farmer on the right, Gary, a man with a good line in sheep brains anecdotes on the left
Ward uses his own cattle, slaughtered in a small abbatoir in Heald Green (I'm sure that's what Ward said, does suburbia know?), plus beasts and fowl from other farms such as Packington. The collective result is the Artisan Meat Company. By the way take a peek at the Packington website, there's a video of hens and geese, which feels shaky and a bit guerrilla, but is amusingly authentic.
Flesh, madam, flesh
You can talk a long while with Pete Ward but the upshot is rewarding food.
There are companies I've never heard of here including one called the Uppercrust Pie Company from Whitefield which supplied a richly flavoured packed meatloaf. Meanwhile the own brand herb cured rindless back bacon has to be one of best I've ever had.
The flavour is so full that one rasher, pan-fried to perfume the kitchen, then slapped between a couple of slices of bloomer smeared with salty butter makes the perfect bacon butty and keeps you going for a good half day. Sauce is not required - save that for limp imported Danish pig.
One rasher will do it for a bacon butty
A chicken and leek pie fed a family and was juicy and meat-filled, not gooey and empty of fowl, a leg of lamb performed the same function but with added flavour and sense of well-being, Cumberland sausages ditto. There was even a delicious snack in the form of a Scotch egg covered in breadcrumbs over black pudding, similar to Ben Holden's much talked about Manchester Egg, but moister.
Happily Didsbury Village Farm Shop is part of a South Manchester trend with the clever Hickson and Black's deli in Chorlton and the fetching Taste of Honey deli in West Didsbury. Then of course there's the four decade old Barbakan in Chorlton, the king of bakers. We're lucky southside.
It'd be great to see the joy spreading. But the dread hand of demographic change and the ghettoisation of the urban rare cheese-eating middle classes into the southern suburbs, means much of north and east Manchester misses out.
One of the best 'boards' aroundI rounded off the day in the aforementioned Salvi's in The Triangle. We shared a board of hams and cheeses and olives that was better than the famous 'plank' in Jamie's new place.
£10.95, bread on the side, filled two of us, while a child ate a simple spaghetti, ham and tomato dish that was equally delicious, although Salvi's needs to cook that one quicker for say, workers on a lunch.
But as I sat there I was thinking about food identities again. The hams on the board were a delight. So were the cheeses. So was the pride of the Italian boys behind the counter preparing the food.
But that pride is no different from Pete Ward's in Didsbury Village Farm Shop. Right now you could do something similar in terms of presentation by choosing well from there and other delis and suppliers across the region.
We just need the confidence to present our food that way. We need the mumbled platitudes of tourist agencies, suppliers and farmers to be translated into deeds so everybody can experience our local food culture. Then maybe the price might dip and north and east Manchester might get a look-in.
I dream of one day flying out of Manchester Airport with a more meaningful gift for our foreign friends than a gilt plastic model of Tower Bridge. A local beer, cheese, cured meat, jam, some fine condiment would probably say a little bit more about us.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield
ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
Didsbury Village Farm Shop, 737 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, M20 6WF.
Shop rating: 18/20
Pies, lovely pies
Fruit and veg as well
Eggs and good bread
