An outdoor food and drink festival has been confirmed for the second May bank holiday in 2021 – with some of Manchester’s top chefs whipping up recipes just for the occasion.
Kantina Weekender – created by the team behind Escape to Freight Island – is a weekend-long celebration of the city’s greatest restaurants and breweries, set to take place from May 28 – May 31.
In attendance will be Sam Buckley from Stockport’s famous eatery Where The Light Gets In, along with Gary Usher from Elite Bistros, Mary-Ellen McTague of The Creameries, and Simon Martin from Manchester’s first Michelin Star-winning restaurant Mana.
The charity partner for Kantina Weekender will be Eat Well Mcr – a Manchester collective of hospitality professionals and volunteers delivering meals to local people facing challenging circumstances.
The three-day festival will be held at Mayfield Depot – with organisers opening up exclusive slots for families.
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We’re so excited to soon welcome @ParkersArms chef-patron Stosi Madi to the Kantina Weekender.
Taking the best of local produce and adding an exciting international touch, Stosie’s passion for all things culinary will no doubt make her Kantina dishes unmissable. pic.twitter.com/k0oej5HSDo
Organisers stated: “The food and drink festival will be jam-packed for the kids as it is for the grown-up guests.
“Expect incredible dishes for the little ones, alongside children’s films and activity packs to keep them occupied whilst you tuck into your feast and a very well-deserved glass of wine.”
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Family slots are extremely limited, available from Friday 28 May to Monday 31 May, from 12pm to 4pm each day.
The price for adults is £35 per person. Tickets for Under 12s will cost £10. Unders 2s can enter for free.
All tickets are fully redeemable and can be used as credit to spend at Kantina Weekender.
The full programme for Kantina is available to view online.
Eats
New Manchester restaurant receives rave review as another is slammed as ‘torture’
Daisy Jackson
Pip, a new restaurant in Manchester, has received a rave national review this week – a review which slammed another restaurant in the same feature.
Food critic William Sitwell wrote in his review in The Telegraph that Pip is charming, refined, and fabulous.
“Bravo, Pip. Pip pip!” he wrote in the glowing write-up on the new restaurant, which stands at the foot of the new Treehouse Hotel and has the acclaimed Mary-Ellen McTague at its helm.
Sitwell’s Telegraph review particularly raved about dishes including Lancashire hot pot (‘fabulously good’), a wild garlic soup (‘a gorgeous thing’), and an apple trifle (‘a gift from heaven’).
But while it was all good for Pip, there were significantly less positive adjectives heaped on another restaurant in Manchester.
In fact, he said that Pip is ‘a great-value tonic’ for the ‘brash (and pricey) torture’ across town.
That restaurant was KAJI, formerly known as MUSU, which he said was ‘all tummies, bald heads, tattoos and heat’.
Sitwell said that while the service and sashimi are good at KAJI, the ‘place is afflicted by some overbearing cooking that cheapens the noble name of Japanese cuisine’.
He wrote: “Lamb chops fail the tender test and are properly wrecked sitting on a vulgar pond of sticky “tomato ponzu”. No beast should die to have that stuff squirted anywhere near it.
“And Kaji is a Japanese gaff without sake. Which is like opening a British pub in Tokyo and forgetting to put an ale on tap.”
Sharing the review, Pip wrote: “Thankyou @telegraph and @williamsitwell for the fantastic feature. We’re so proud of our team here.”
Milk Maids, Bolton – The family-run ice cream parlour on an award-winning farm
Daisy Jackson
Ice cream doesn’t come much fresher than those served at Milk Maids – in fact, you’ll be standing right on the family farm where the cows that produce the milk live, as you tuck into your scoop.
This unassuming dairy farm in Bolton has been in operation for decades, and in the same family for generations.
But it’s when sisters Fiona and Rebecca saw the full potential of all that award-winning milk being produced on their farm that Milk Maids was born.
This ice cream parlour on Dearden’s Farm in Over Hulton is now one of the hottest spots in Greater Manchester, especially when the weather is similarly hot.
Every month they release a whole batch of flavours, all made fresh daily (you can literally see Fiona legging it across the yard with buckets of milk to make fresh batches), with May specials including white chocolate and sea salt caramel, raspberry cookie, and passionfruit pavlova.
Milk Maids, Bolton – The family-run ice cream parlour on an award-winning farm
Cones can be filled with molten chocolate or pistachio creme before your ice cream is scooped and pressed into the cone.
Or you can have your chosen flavour whizzed up into a milkshake, served in a milk bun, or presented in an insulated take-home box for later.
We could wax lyrical about how good this ice cream is, but the queues really do speak for themselves, and you should go and get in it right now.
The Manc -
25th February 2021 
