Friday Food Fights Gets #UpInYourGrill

B.EAT Street’s Friday Food Fight at the Victorian Upper Campfield market hall has been taking Castlefield by the danglies since early-March and slapping it about with mounds of naughty, naughty grub, grog and DJs.

It's an old industrial building, exposed brick, peeling ceilings, an inside area and a large outdoor sun terrace. Our theme is New York style block-parties, rough around the edges, shipping containers, brick and dust.

But FFF has been put on ice for the time being (until the second round in September) as the city’s new booze and food good-time guys, Chris Legh and Will Evans of B.Eat Street, prepare to set loose two more events on the city.

The beer-focused Brew Bash MCR will take to the same Upper Campfield Hall for a one-off event on the evenings of Friday 11 and Saturday 12 July, while the next biggie, Up In Your Grill MCR, will host ten weekends of summer block parties from Friday 20 June until mid-August in an undisclosed ‘industrial location close to Northern Quarter’.

Get guessing.

So when we saw B.Eat Streeter and Friday Food Fights co-founder Chris Legh walking down Deansgate, we gave chase like a hungry Jackal. Diving on his back, we dragged him into a pub, bought him beer and nuts and forced him to tell us what he had planned… He’s a cagey bugger.

B.Eat Street are bringing the nosh

Chris... sit back down. So Friday Food Fights, that went well didn't it?

We were busy from the get-go. We were originally hoping for 1500 people through the door a week but it went from 1500 to 2500 coming and going throughout the night. Around 20-22k over the twelve weeks, more than we expected.

Why did it take off so quickly?

Firstly, the site is spectacular. But nobody in Manchester had merged the food, booze and music like that before. We wanted to put something totally different together. For me the real success was the new start-ups who shone amongst the well established restaurants like Solita and Yang Sing. Four of five of those smaller guys have gone on to more events because of Friday Food Fights. We're proud of that.

So that's it for FFF?

No, we'll be back with Friday Food Fight in mid-September, but we need to move away from it now and look how to up-the-game. We're unsure if we'll be in the same venue, we're looking at our options. We want to take it to the next level, change it up and keep it fresh, add additional elements, perhaps up the capacity, add more food and entertainment. Just get bigger and better. We're very conscious that we want to stay as an event, we were asked about doing Sundays but we don't want to stray into becoming just a market. That's not us. We're a turbo-charged food court with top drinks and music.

Friday Food Fight

We hear you've got a Brew Bash up your sleeve?

That's a craft beer event we'll be staging at Upper Campfield on the evenings of July 11 and 12. It's a one-off event, 30 different beers from twenty breweries, four or five of our food partners with DJs. It's essentially a two day beer-festival, just swap the older CAMRA beards for younger trendier beards. And the no-beards too, of course.

Up In Your Grill is your next big event. What's the story?

It's a natural progression for us. We're in to finding these great spaces that you've never noticed before. We've got an amazing venue, in and around the Northern Quarter, but we can't tell you yet because we're nailing out the final agreements. It's an old industrial building, exposed brick, peeling ceilings, an inside area and a large outdoor sun terrace. Our theme is New York style block-parties, rough around the edges, shipping containers, brick and dust. It's slightly smaller than Upper Campfield, so we'll have four or five food operators in there, booze and a DJ perched high above everyone.

'Around NQ'... any ideas?

It's over two days this time, still free entry?

Up In Your Grill will be over ten weekends from Friday June 20 and on the Friday night, Saturday afternoon and in to Saturday evening. I think because our capacity has decreased but we've up'd the entertainment side, with each one curated by a different club night like Horse Meat Disco or Funkademia, we may have to charge a small entry fee, but it'll only be a couple of quid, and hugely worth it. There's big plans, we've pulled in Jamie Scahill from TwentyTwentyTwo on this one, amongst others, we may even bring up some names from London to put alongside the Manchester lot.

Who's been confirmed?

(With that Legh's eyes shifted from side-to-side, a crafted grin spread across his mug. Jumping up he flipped our bar stool, swigged his pint and darted from the pub. 'You'll have to wait and seeee....' trailed him down Deansgate).