BAKERIE Wine Fair takes place Saturday 22 September and there are 3 sessions to choose from which are listed below: 12-2pm £5, 3pm-5pm £10, 6pm-9pm £10. This event is part of the Manchester Food & Drink Festival and is an opportunity to taste wines from the Bakerie collection. Tickets can be purchased in store or by telephone and people can pay by card and collect their tickets on the door. The Bakerie Tasting Store (click here), is in The Hive on Lever Street and, is one of Confidential’s favourite new drinking places in the North West. It has an expansive and attractive site complete with bread baked on the premises, a large range of wines to take away and an eclectic range of bottles from a serving system unique in Manchester called 'By The Glass'.
Bakerie
MASSIVE WELL done to the boys at Manchester's lovely Hanging Ditch wine shop and bar - you know the one with the best and broadest wine drinking terrace in the UK at Victoria Street/Cateaton Street. They just keep winning award after award. This time they've picked up Regional Wine Merchant of the Year 2012. This follows on from the success of winning Innovator of the Year in 2011. Both prizes come from the prestigious Decanter World Wine Awards. For more info on Hanging Ditch and other Manchester wine suppliers click here.
SEAMARK, the seafood importer, that also hosts Vermilion Restaurant and its equally glam sister Cinnabar in Newton Heath, has produced a glossy and charming cookbook. This is called Ocean to your Plate. It has been edited by the greatest living English epicure and our Confidential correspondent Neil Sowerby. It's bright, colourful, costs £9.95 and has almost 150 pages - it is a particularly good on how to make the most of your prawns. One page titled Crispy Morning Glory turns out rather disappointingly to be a recipe not a position in the Kama Sutra. It costs £9.95 and can be bought, proceeds going to charity, at the restaurant or online at this link
Ocean to your Plate
BOOTHS Supermarket is busy 'tantalising their taste buds' selecting the best in regional food for the Independent Producers Fair to take place in Albert Square on the opening weekend of this year’s Manchester Food and Drink Festival (MFDF). The Independent Producers Fair is a first for MFDF and will take place in the Festival Hub on Albert Square from Friday 21–Sunday 23 September. The Booths’ Regional Food Roadshow will offer cookery demonstrations from Booths’ chef Rob Morris Lang, alongside Beer and Wine Masterclasses, and a special ‘How Well Do You Know Your Cheese Competition’ - a question we at Confidential are always asking ourselves. Other specials include chillies, mustards and pâtés to fresh vegetables, oils and cakes. Click here for more www.booths.co.uk.
Smiley people knocking back booze
REVOLUCION de Cuba is opening in October in Peter Street sparking a mini-revival of the former winner of Young Alcoholics Street Of The Year 1998-2004. Let's hope this operation is more Brewdog than Brannigans and enhances the street. This operation with outlets across the country describes itself as 'rum bar and cantina'. The company states that this will be a 'flagship'. It will offer Latin American-inspired live music seven days a week, a menu of Cuban and Spanish food and a rum-infused cocktail menu - there are more than 50 rums. It's a two storey venue, which was formally Squares and is being fully decked out with a Cuban-inspired rustic interior and will serve more than 50 of the finest rums from the Caribbean and Latin America.
AND there's more. Revolucion de Cuba will also see the launch of Revolucion de Cuba’s first ever ‘Rare Rum Store’. Tucked away in the basement, the 'exclusive' Havana Bar will offer the opportunity to sample some of the world’s rarest rums costing between £25 and £200 a measure. Website www.revoluciondecuba.com.
AFTERNOON tea and cocktail aficionados can now double their pleasure at a new tea and coffee cocktail bar. Café Blend at Corn Exchange has launched a new menu including joys and delights such as the White Peach & Tea Bellini which apparently ‘combines delicate peachy overtones with the finest Spanish Prosecco’. There’s also the Tea Cosmo which is made up with tea and Prosecco. There’s a menu of over 150 drinks offering a trip round the world such as the one representing Africa, the Turtle Mocha, white chocolate an caramel with a shell of whip cream & biscuit. Website www.cafeblend.co.uk
Cafe Blend New Menu
THE CAMRA Good Beer Guide 2013 has just been published with pubs across the region celebrating their inclusion in the 40th Anniversary edition of the UK’s best selling beer and pub guide. With more pubs now stocking real ale than at any time since the lager influx of the 70s, competition for places in the guide gets tougher year on year but that hasn’t stopped some pubs establishing themselves as regulars including The Nursery in Heaton Norris, Stockport. The Hydes brewery pub first appeared in the Good Beer Guide in 1984 meaning it has now made it into 30 consecutive editions. This Grade II listed building is an inter-wars classic and its original layout and fittings have earned it a place on CAMRA's National Inventory of Heritage Pubs. Newcomers to the Guide include Port Street Beer House in the Manchester’s Northern Quarter which despite being less than two years old has firmly established itself as a beer epicentre. The guide is £12.99 for non-CAMRA members.
The Nursery
