WE HAVE to admit, we didn’t see this one coming.

So what does this mean for McTague and Aumbry’s touted move to the Roadhouse in Northern Quarter?

Award-winning Aumbry and Great British Menu chef Mary Ellen-McTague has been announced as the new Head Chef of The Real Junk Food Project – Manchester’s first ‘waste food pay-as-you-feel restaurant’.

Due to open within Shudehill’s Wonder Inn in mid-March, The Real Junk Food Project is a Leeds-born social enterprise which turns unwanted but perfectly edible food otherwise destined for landfill into delicious, hearty fare on a ‘pay-as-you-feel’ basis.

This means you dip into your pocket for a fiver and some of our more vulnerable citizens can eat something warm and nutritious for next to ‘nowt. Very worthy indeed. Read all about it here.

The Wonder InnThe Wonder Inn

The project director, Corin Bell, is chuffed with the coup. She told Confidential:

"We are thrilled to have Mary-Ellen joining the team after she heard about the post through social media and got in touch. 

"Mary-Ellen has always had a strong focus on sustainability, which showed itself at Aumbry through the purchase of local, organic and sustainable produce. I think her experience and level of technique are difficult to beat. She is very creative with a passion for produce.

"This is a fairly unique role. I don’t think being the Head Chef at Real Junk Food is quite like anywhere else. I hope this role will be great fun for her."

He's got that right, the project's flagship Leeds branch once received 250 kilos of soon-to-expire mushrooms and had to create a two-day menu with every mushroom dish they could think of. "For chefs, there’s certainly nowhere like it," says Bell, "It's like Ready Steady Cook everyday."

The project – which has run multiple pop-up events since it came to Manchester in May 2014 - hopes to highlight ‘the scale and senselessness of food waste’.

Recent estimates suggest fifteen million tonnes of food is wasted each year in the UK, while 5.8 million people live in food poverty.

So what does this mean for McTague and Aumbry’s touted move to the former Roadhouse in Northern Quarter? Well, things have gone suspiciously quiet since the news was announced in March last year. We smell a Pizza Express.

The Real Junk Food Project cafe will launch at the Wonder Inn in mid-March.