THE city centre foodie festival that last year attracted over 150,000 people, sinking 40,000 pints of beer and 5,000 ostrich burgers (not so quick now are you) is heading back to the Festival Hub at Albert Square from 26 September to 7 October.
“We are really excited about this year’s festival, which has been designed to include all the elements that Manchester residents have told us that they love"
Albert Square will be filled with Manchester’s largest street food fair, a beer festival serving over 100 different local beers, Robinson’s Pub on the Hub, an artisan food market, the festival Tiki Shack, The Birdhouse charity cake sale, and a series of masterclasses providing practical tips from fileting a fish to plucking a pheasant - you start by grabbing the feathers and pulling… really hard.
There’ll also be plenty of boozey goings-on outside of Albert Square, with the Big Indie Wine Festival, a whiskey festival and a new spirit market where visitors can sample and purchase an array of boutique spirit brands. Remember: Don’t mix your free spirit samples – or you’ll never find your way out of the festival.
Feast market
Rounding off the festival on Monday 7 October will be the Gala dinner (the venue is TBC but it’s likely to be held in a particularly prominent and pointy central Manchester building on Albert Square), where fifteen awards will be dished out to the best of Manchester’s bars, restaurants and chefs. Awards include: Best Restaurant, Pub, Foodie Pub, Coffee, Bar, Chef and Newcomer.
Festival Executive Director Siobahn Hanley said: “We are really excited about this year’s festival, which has been designed to include all the elements that Manchester residents have told us that they love, along with the addition of some new, exciting activity that we’ve never done before - more details soon to be announced!
“This year we will also be using the profile of the Festival to work alongside local charities and agencies to explore the issue of food poverty in our region, looking at how local people and businesses can start to help tackle this problem”.
Information about all events can be found at www.foodanddrinkfestival.com and by following @mfdf13 on twitter.
