THE SEVENTEENTH Manchester Food and Drink Festival kicked off at Deangate booze den Elixir last week, for a ten day celebration of the city's soaring food stock.
So to make sure you don't miss the best of goings on this week, including Gary Neville making sausage rolls (slow down Gaz), here's a breakdown of the bits you should be making a beeline for.
Having seen off a barrel or two of a drunken butcher's special malt loaf brew (see here) in Elixir, the bash moved on to the nucleus of proceedings at the 'festival hub', which has commandeered Albert Square until Sunday 28 September.
Elixir
Albert Square festival hub
Here organisers have thrown together a neighbourhood of back-of-the-van traders from the Hip Hop Chip Shop and the Jolly Waggoner vying for business alongside more established restaurants like the Albert Square Chop House and Red's True BBQ.
Shoring up the foodies are a handul of bars, a van full of wine and a vast Thwaites beer tent with long Bavarian beer benches for plenty of bottoms. There'll be a dizzying selection of 100 different beers from the best brewers and microbrewers across the week, which, when you think about it, is only ten different beers a day to try over the duration. Best not though eh?
Speaking of dizzying, there's a whole lot planned at this year's festival, including some stuff you can't chuck down your gullet. So to make sure you don't miss the best of goings on this week, including Gary Neville making sausage rolls (what can that man not do?), here's a breakdown of the bits you should make room for before the festival packs away on Monday 29 September...
Festival hub
Wood-fired pizza
GRUB IN THE HUB
With average highs of a balmy 17°C expected this week, popping to the festival hub for a lunch or two outdoors will bat a Greggs buttie out of the park. Local game burgers, wood-fired pizza, quirky fish and chips, chicken schnitzels, thai curries, corn beef hash, naughty hot dogs, falafel wraps, Yorshire pies, low and slow BBQ, Mexican scran or Malaysian noodles, all washed down with a swift lunchtime ale... well... gotta squeeze the last out of summer haven't you?
Festival Hub | Albert Square | Until Sunday 28 Sep | Midday to 11pm
BEST 100 BEERS
Aside from the grub in the hub, the focus of MFDF is their huge regional beer festival, with over 100 beers from the likes of Manchester's Marble to Bolton's Bank Top brewers taking to the vast Thwaites beer tent over the duration. To help the nectar down will be a great number of local solo artists, bands, DJs, choirs, and even some have-a-go open mic'ers. No chucking at the stage... this isn't that kind of festival. And put that back in your trousers, sir.
Beer Tent | Albert Square | Mon 22 to Sun 28 Sep | Midday to 11pm
Grub in the hub
There'll be 100 beers at this year's festival
LUCY HOPE & THE HOUSE OF GLASS
Performing on the Eat, Drink, Dance stage on Wednesday 24 from 7pm will be Manchester's premier diva and chanteuse (French for popular songstress), Lucy Hope, alongside dark psychedelic garage rock band, the House of Glass. Also performing on the evening will be infectious Manchester-based indie blues-rock outfit Turrentine Jones.
Festival Hub | Albert Square | FREE | Weds 24 Sep | From 7pm
GARY NEVILLE ON THE PANS
As Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs prepare to launch Hotel Football, their new Old Trafford hotel venture later this year (former Manchester United team mates Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Philip Neville are also involved), Gary will be hitting the pans for a one-off demo alongside two-starred Michelin chef and the hotel's creative director, Michael Wignall, and Hotel Football's executive chef, Brendan Fyldes. The trio will be showcasing a number of signature dishes from the hotel's restaurant, Cafe Football, including sausage rolls and burgers. It's rumoured that Giggs might even show up with a crumble... at the back. Had to.
Hotel Football: Neville and Co. | Albert Square | Fri 26 Sep | 5.30pm | Tickets £7
And here's a crumble we've had at the back
THE UNABOMBERS
Continent-hopping DJs turned Manchester bar and restaurant owners, Luke and Justin Unabomber, opened Chorlton's bar-cafe Electrik back in 2009 - it became a hotspot in no time. This year they opened the more food-centric Didsbury eaterie, Volta, a casual dine sharer plate kinda place. Once again, hotspot, no time - though they did tell a big fat porkie pie about Prince eating there that did them no harm. Before this though they were globe-trotting superstar deejays, creators of the infamous and now deceased MCR club night Electric Chair. This promises to be a funky and FREE affair.
The Unabombers | Albert Square | Fri 26 Sept | 9pm | FREE
BIG INDIE WINE FEST 2014
It's not just about the beer you know. This year's Big Indie Wine Fest moves to New Century House on Corporation Street from Fri 26 to Sat 27 September, with the best independent merchants in the region bringing a grand selection of some exclusive and exciting boutique wines that the supermarkets haven't got their mitts on yet. A £12 ticket affords you a glass to sample your socks off around the venue before settling on which to take home. Because you're going to buy a bottle aren't you? Yeah *hic* of course...
Big Indie Wine Fest 2014 | New Century House | Fri 26 to Sat 27 Sep | Fri 6pm to 9pm | Sat 2pm to 5pm and 6pm to 9pm | Tickets £12
The Big Indie Wine Fest
CHEESE & CHOCOLATE FEST
MFDF's Cheese and Chocolate Festival is a new concept for 2014, with an aim to celebrate two of the nation's favourite treats in one location. The discovery awhile back that chocolate and blue cheese shared multiple flavour compounds led Heston 'I'll combine anything me' Blumenthal to create a celebrated molten chocolate and blue cheese cake. Since then many more chefs have been at it and it's now set to become a recognized food trend. Still unconvinced? Fair enough. But there'll be a host of local cheese-makers and chocolatiers on hand to tempt you into having a dabble.
MFDF Cheese & Chocolate Festival | Sat 27 to Sun 28 Sep | Albert Square | FREE
More from the Manchester Food and Drink Festival here.
