The UK’s biggest Italian food festival Festa Italiana is returning to Manchester in 2021 – with Cathedral Gardens turning green, white and red over August bank holiday.
Featuring delicious pizzas, fresh pasta, sweet crepes and deli meats as far as the eye can see, Festa Italiana is known for bringing amazing street food into Manchester city centre and showcasing top Italian chefs from across the region.
First launched in 2017, the festival is promising some exciting new additions for its fourth edition – including a massive outdoor cinema.
Sponsors Peroni will be bringing a big screen down for the weekend, hosting themed screenings of classics like La Dolce Vita, Romeo and Juliet and Cinema Paradiso – so get ready to sink into bean bags and deck chairs, tuck into popcorn and sip on aperitivo cocktails or bottles of Italian lager.
The UK’s biggest Italian food festival is coming to Manchester / Image: Festa Italiana
A ‘photography exhibit surprise’ is also on the cards for Festa Italiana 2021 (more on this in due course), as well as a wide range of workshops, demonstrations, book signings and banquets.
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Top-class chefs like Aldo Zilli, Giancarlo Caldesi, Gennaro Cantaldo, specialist pasta maker and author Carmela Sereno Hayes, and Festa founder Maurizio Cecco are all confirmed to attend.
Maurizio’s 12-year-old daughter, Sienna Cecco, will also be making an appearance: leading some free cooking classes over the weekend for children.
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A talented little chef in her own right, Sienna has her own YouTube channel and developed quite a following after live-streaming family cooking lessons during the lockdown.
Salvi’s owner Maurizio Cecco founded the Italian food festival / Image: Festa Italiana
Elsewhere, Salvi’s has confirmed it will be bringing back its popular deli stand – so whether you’re after top-quality cured meats, cheeses, olive oil or cake you know where to go for the finest Italian produce.
The street food lineup for this year is still being kept under wraps for now, but with the emergence of some new Italian-inspired eateries during the lockdown, we are crossing our fingers for some fat slabs of lasagne and Italian-American deli sandwiches.
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Always a big part of the festival, previous years have seen festival founders Salvi’s churn out popular fried pizzas and fresh pasta alongside Shudehill’s Pasta Factory, Rio Ferdinand’s glitzy Italian Rosso, and sourdough West Didsbury pizzaiolos Proove.
Festa Italiana will take place at Cathedral Gardens in August / Image: Festa Italiana
Born out of Manchester’s rich Italian heritage and community, Festa Italiana will return to its home at Festival Piazza, Cathedral Gardens from August 27 – 29.
To find out more information and keep up to date on new announcements, head over to the Festa Italiana Facebook page.
Eats
A new restaurant serving seafood boils is opening at Printworks in Manchester
Daisy Jackson
Shrimp Shack is set to open its first restaurant outside London this summer, with a new site in Printworks in Manchester.
The new restaurant will be serving seafood boils, as well as huge £19.95 platters, £10 lunch deals, and cocktail pitchers.
Shrimp Shack is set to open in the former Frankie & Benny’s site, beneath Printworks’ dazzling digital ceiling.
The restaurant is already cult-followed with its London locations, where it’s built a solid reputation for generous portions and bold flavours.
Shrimp Shack favourites include various seafood boils, a dish with its roots in the Southern states of the USA, including their shrimp boil, seafood boil, and the lux lobster boil.
Each boil is loaded with shrimp, seafood, sausages, corn on the cob, boiled eggs, spiced rice and peri chips, in the brand’s signature secret sauce.
There’s also set to be a Shack Savers Selection, with five huge dishes (battered fish and shrimps, a 12oz Wagyu steak, grilled salmon with prince shrimps, surf and turf, and grilled shrimp and calamari) priced at just £19.95, including two sides and a choice of sauces.
At lunchtimes, there’ll be £10 dishes like the Sprimp Rich Po’ Boy sandwich, the double cheese smash burger, and a veggie option (or you can upgrade to a lobster roll for £5).
And there’ll be refillable soft drinks, freshly-blended smoothies, milkshakes, mocktails, and sharing pitchers.
Shrimp Shack opens in Printworks this summer, serving seafood boils and platters
Rish Gola, co-founder of Shrimp Shack, said: “Shrimp shack was born in London to redefine how people enjoy premium seafood; served fresh and fast, where bold flavours are brought together with everyday dishes.
“Shrimp Shack has a strong appeal with ethnic communities, family diners, and groups of friends who come together over big flavours and generous seafood feasts.
“Our accessible pricing and high-quality dishes create apremium fast experience that welcomes everyone.”
Dan Davis, general manager at Printworks, said: “We’re delighted to have secured Shrimp Shack as Printworks’ latest tenant, its first location outside of London and another exciting restaurant to add to our offering.
“Shrimp Shack’s unique and distinctive offering is perfectly aligned with our aim to deliver high quality experience-led concepts right in the heart of Manchester.”
Top Manchester restaurant ‘so chuffed’ after receiving glowing national review
Daisy Jackson
Top Manchester restaurant Skof has received a stunning review from a national critic, with the team saying they are ‘so chuffed’.
The acclaimed NOMA restaurant, headed up by chef Tom Barnes, has rapidly become one of Manchester’s most decorated restaurants.
Not only does it proudly display its first Michelin star – earned in less than a year after opening – but it’s also been named the coveted AA Restaurant of the Year.
And now Skof can add a rave Guardian review to the list too, with critic Grace Dent heaping praise upon the business.
She said that Skof is ‘well worth the hype’, describing it (much like its parent restaurant L’enclume) to be ‘one of those intensely relaxed yet still ferociously fancy restaurants’.
Dent praised ‘hugely scoffable’ snacks like a cheese biscuit topped with broad bean, pike roe and shiso, as well as a lightly set custard with truffle and mushroom dashi (‘a quiche filling on steroids’).
In her Guardian review, she also loved the final course always served at Skof no matter how much the menu changes with the seasons – the tiramisu served from a giant bowl, tableside.
“The final hurrah: that scoop of Tom’s dad’s tiramisu, served from a big bowl,” Grace Dent wrote.
“It’s a clunky, sentimental and, ultimately, glorious end to the meal. Many Michelin-starred restaurants bookend your visit with a gift of seeds, teabags or fancy chocolate, but at Skof they send you on your way with this tiny taste of boozy stodge that’s both incongruous with everything that went before but at the same time is also symbolic of Tom Barnes’ life and everything that went before.”
Grace Dent heaped praise on Skof in a recent Guardian reviewSkof placed 29th in the National Restaurant Awards
The amazing review also said: “Fine dining can at times be truly maddening, and leave diners hungry and hoodwinked, but Skof is proof that this often precarious blend of pacing, staging and portion size can be properly magical.”
She signed off by saying: “Skof is clever and emotional… It’s also well worth the hype, so do try to nab a table, if you can. It’s fancy, yes, but it also fills you up. This is fine dining that even a naysayer would like.”
Skof has said that it’s ‘so chuffed’ to receive the review, which landed in The Guardian on the restaurant’s second birthday.
They wrote: “Our 2nd birthday just got a quite a bit more special with an absolutely amazing review from @gracedent. We’re so chuffed with the write up. Hope the man from the traitors comes down, so we can serve him a crumpet.”
You can read Grace Dent’s full Skof review in The Guardian here.
Georgina Pellant -
25th May 2021 
