Eats

A giant Sunday roast served on ‘Salford’s longest table’ is happening next month

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson - 15th August 2022

A huge communal roast dinner has been announced as part of the food line-up for free festival, We Invented the Weekend.

The new event in Salford will be bringing together class acts from the worlds of sports, music, comedy, theatre, dance, workshops, talks, food, charity, wellness, crafts and more over the weekend of 10-11 September.

Eat Well MCR, a collective of chefs and hospitality professionals led by Mary-Ellen McTague, will be throwing together all the best bits of a cosy Sunday.

There’ll be piles of newspapers, a Bloody Mary bar, and a giant communal Sunday roast, served up on ‘Salford’s longest table’.

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The huge communal roast dinner will take place at MediaCityUK as part of the We Invented the Weekend festival

Mary-Ellen will cook up a roast rib of beef with all the trimmings – Yorkshire puddings, gravy, roast potatoes, buttered carrots, and cauliflower cheese – with a celeriac nut roast for vegetarians, and sticky toffee pudding to finish.

Local vinyl reissue record label Be With Records will provide a laidback soundtrack, while Seven Bro7hers will create a special Weekend Beer for the occasion and will invite other breweries – including Shindigger and Manchester Union Lager – to join them.

Mary-Ellen McTague said: “We Invented the Weekend is such a wonderful idea and we’re delighted to get involved.

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“The festival celebrates a hard-won campaign for workers’ right to leisure time. Many of the families Eat Well MCR supports have a working parent – and yet still struggle to feed their families. It’s a subject very close to my heart.

Mary-Ellen McTague will cook up a giant Sunday roast for 200 people at Salford’s We Invented the Weekend festival. Credit: Unsplash

“I’m cooking 200 roast dinners for ticket holders and we’ll also be delivering some to the people in our community for free.”

There’ll be two sittings for Mary-Ellen’s Sunday roast feast, between 12pm and 2pm, and 3pm and 5pm, on Sunday 11 September.

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You can book your tickets for Salford’s giant roast here – they’re priced at £30 for two courses, and £10 for those under the age of 14.

Read more: Brand new festival to take over Salford this year – and it’s FREE

Elsewhere at We Invented the Weekend, there’ll be street food celebrating cuisines from across the globe joining MediaCityUK’s existing Box on the Docks offering.

Traders will include Carnival (home-cooked Brazilian food), Desert Island Dumplings (vegan dishes, in deep-fried dumplings), House of Habesha (traditional Eritrean and Ethiopian dishes), Mama Sue’s (home-spiced frankfurters), Spuds and Bro (poutine), Paradiso (Italian desserts) and Wild Soul (vegan doughnuts).

There’ll also be loaded handmade potato waffles from Thief Street, pizzas from Dagi pizza, and smashed burgers from ex-Emmerdale star Adam Thomas’s Patty and Press.

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Christmas Market favourites Panc will have plant-powered takes on burgers, kebabs, hot dogs, wtaps and desserts.

Then the resident businesses of MediaCityUK and Quayside, like Chapati Cafe, General Store, The Botanist and The Alchemist, will have festival specials over the weekend.

To find out more about the festival and sign up for updates, visit www.weinventedtheweekend.com

Featured image: Supplied

Eats

Chorlton neighbourhood favourite The Creameries has permanently closed

Georgina Pellant Georgina Pellant

Chorlton neighbourhood favourite The Creameries has permanently closed, it has been confirmed.

According to chef-owner Mary-Ellen McTague, the business had been doing well at the end of 2019 but has been “f*cked” ever since the pandemic.

Two years of not bringing in enough money, coupled with fewer people eating out, a backlog of loans and then a rise in VAT combined to leave her with little option but to sell – yet whilst there were a few interested buyers, none made it over the finish line.

As a result, after trying a number of different formats to keep the business going, she has made the decision to close up shop for good.

Speaking on closure, Mary-Ellen told the Manchester Evening News: “The whole thing has been awful, but it has been like that since the beginning of the pandemic.

Image: The Creameries
Image: The Creameries

“There was still a chance we were going to make a sale. We had three consecutive buyers who were very close, and then backed away,” she continued.

“The longer the economic instability has gone on, the more and more nervous [buyers] have been. 

“In September 2019, we started operating just as a restaurant, doing tasting menus, and it was working so well,” she said. “We had a brilliant Jay Rayner review, it was packed, we were making money, not just keeping afloat. Then the pandemic hit, and we’ve been f**ked since then.”

Read more: Eat Well: The restaurant-backed charity feeding hidden homeless families in Manchester

The former Edwardian Dairy was first opened in 2018 by the esteemed Manchester chef Mary-Ellen McTague as a bakery and natural wine bar serving a selection of pickles and small plates.

It later switched to operating as a restaurant, serving tasting menus that proved very popular with punters, before – like the rest of hospitality – it was forced to close in early 2020 as the country went into lockdown.

Image: The Creameries
Image: The Creameries

When it reopened, it tried a few different things before introducing Campagna, an affordable Italian menu that, whilst popular, didn’t manage to keep bringing in the footfall in the long term.

It appears that a new tenant has secured the site, although further details surrounding the operator are currently being kept under wraps.

“We tried so hard. To adapt and survive, and it just didn’t work,” Mary-Ellen added.

Read more: The Manchester Food and Drink Festival award winners 2022

“Pre-pandemic it was really, really, really hard to get to the point where more money was going in than coming out. Restaurants don’t talk about it a lot, but if you ask people off the record, most will say that getting to the point where you’ve done slightly better than break even, that’s a strong month.

“Things went from challenging to just completely impossible.”

Read more: One of Manchester’s first vegan restaurants has closed its doors for good

Going forward, Mary-Ellen will focus her efforts on her restaurant-backed community project Eat Well MCR, which feeds hidden homeless families in Manchester and has to date delivered over 70,000 meals to people in need.

She will also continue to work on the new Treehouse Hotel opening, which is expected to open in Manchester city centre in early 2023.

Feature image – The Creameries

Eats

Massive queue forms FOUR HOURS ahead of Wagamama katsu curry giveaway

Daisy Jackson Daisy Jackson

Wagamama is giving away free katsu curries today – and a massive queue has already formed.

The popular restaurant’s site on St Peter’s Square in Manchester city centre has a long line of people eagerly hoping to snap up a free lunch.

The giveaway has been launched in celebration of National Katsu Curry Day, with restaurants right across England, Scotland and Wales taking part.

In Manchester city centre alone, there are Wagamama restaurants at St Peter’s Square, Spinningfields and Printworks – not to mention the six more scattered across Greater Manchester boroughs.

The free curry dishes won’t be given out until 3pm on Tuesday 27 September – but already by 11am there were dozens standing in line in town.

Niko Omilana with a katsu curry. Credit: Wagamama
The huge queue outside Wagamama in Manchester. Credit: The Manc Group

With only 50 katsu dishes per Wagamama restaurant up for grabs, handed out on a first-come first-serve basis, it’s looking like the early queueing will be totally necessary.

The freebies are also only available to students who have registered with the new Wagamama Noodle Union, a new student society, which is being fronted by YouTuber Niko Omilana.

Read more: The Manchester Food and Drink Festival award winners 2022

Niko said: “As one of my first acts as noodle union president, I’m proud to announce free katsu to mark National Katsu Curry Day – a day to celebrate across the nation as we come together in honour of all things katsu.

“Make sure to sign up to the noodle union so that you don’t miss out on a free katsu curry and other epic prizes throughout the year!”

Wagamama will give away 50 free katsu dishes per restaurant for dine-in, and diners can choose from chicken, yasai, vegatsu or hot.

Featured image: The Manc Group

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