The Bolton Food and Drink Festival returns this August bank holidayas the internationally acclaimed event celebrates 18 years in the town.
The award-winning festival is the biggest of its kind in the North West, bringing together celebrity and regional chefs, cooking demos, live music, street entertainment, special events and over 200 market traders.
Running across the long weekend, festivities will kick off on Friday 25 August and run through until Monday 28 August with special events including Bottomless Brunch, comedy dining experiences and a one-time DJ set from TV personality Gok Wan.
Hosted across the town centre, foodies can roam freely as they explore two dedicated music stages, bars, food stalls and plenty more at the free-to-attend festival – from unique gifts to local artwork.
Here’s everything you can expect if you’re heading down over the August bank holiday.
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Food and drink
Image: The Manc Eats
Image: What’s Your Beef
Be the first to try out some scrumptious cuisine from around the world, with over 200 food traders across the town centre on the bank holiday serving everything from burgers and homemade Scotch eggs to Turkish shawarma, donuts, and smokey barbecued meats.
Discover markets, brilliant local food and drink, plus special ticketed events such as Bottomless Brunch, and theatrical dinners like the Fawlty Towers and Live and Let Live Dining Experiences.
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This year’s festival will also host lavish bottomless brunches across the weekend in celebration of its eighteenth year in the wonderful Albert Halls complex, featuring a delicious brunch and a wide range of drinks and boozy cocktails.
As for further street food traders to check out, keep your eyes peeled for dedicated roly poly traders Roly Poly Ltd, mezze from Greek Street Food, and Bolton favourite Istanbul’s Kitchen.
Chef demos
Image: Supplied
Image: Supplied
Kicking the weekend off with a bang is festival ambassador Michael Caines, who held two Michelin stars for 18 consecutive years. Fresh from Lympstone Manor, the much-loved celebrity chef ambassador launches the flagship festival on Friday morning. You’ll be able to catch him in a free cookery demo too.
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Starting the show on Saturday is a festival newbie and much-loved chef, stylist, DJ, author and presenter Gok Wan, taking a spin in the kitchen and showcasing some of his delicious Chinese cooking.
Sunday will welcome another new face to the festival when business owner, charity founder, author, food presenter and TV cook, Nisha Katona MBE joins Team Bolton for the first time, leading the way for a spectacular Sunday spread.
Mowgli Street Food’s Nisha will be showcasing her love of Indian cooking in a range of cookery demos bringing new simple recipes to Bolton and sharing her infectious passion for all things food.
As usual, Monday is headlined by festival icon James Martin, whose ever-popular cookery demos bring with them a love of cuisines from around the world and a lesson on how to recreate some tasty dishes.
MasterChef 2023 winner Chariya Khattiyot will also join as part of the festival’s regional chef demos, as will Gok Wan’s brother, Kwoklyn Wan, who is a chef on Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch and Amazon Prime series Man With A Wok.
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Music
Image: Supplied
Image: Supplied
More than 70 performers will descend on the two live stages, with a variety of music and entertainment from around the world, all completely free for festival visitors.
From Irish dancers, choirs, soul, funk, jazz, folk, Latin American, indie, rock, dance and pop, there is something for everybody to enjoy while you soak up the festival atmosphere.
Music lovers can revel in the delights of national artists as well as local performers including Tommy Govan, Mike Roberts, Danny Quin, Conor Peploe, Will Edgar, Holly Jenkinson and John Doyle.
With performers from nine to 80 years old, the festival welcomes all ages at the Festival Main Stage on Le Mans Crescent and the Acoustic Stage on Victoria Square.
Headlining on Friday and making their full band debut at the festival, will be Bolton’s own, The Shed Project plus special guests.
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The band, influenced by the Madchester sound of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, are joined by Marseille, The Jace Campbell Band and The Marbellas.
The fun continues on Saturday as highlights include loop-based, live music dance trio, Scratch Trio, performing popular classic dance anthems.
In addition, alongside the UK’s premier 1980s Electronica/New Wave tribute band, Electromantics are 5-piece band, Baiana Band, playing Brazilian jazz, pop, funk and soul.
Sunday is equally as entertaining with Stax of Soul, a nine-piece soul band born and bred in Greater Manchester, headlining as part of their 40th-anniversary tour.
If you missed the recent tour, then this one’s for you – joining them is Bolton-born Lou Nichols delivering a rocking set of Pink’s greatest hits.
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Entertaining Latin music lovers is Guacamaya Latin Band, with the best South American rhythms and most popular songs in Europe.
Last but not least and joining the lineup on Bank Holiday Monday is Bhangra Smash Up, a 3-piece, high-energy drumming band playing popular chart and dance music.
Closing the festivities are five-piece party band, The Shivers, covering your favourite party songs and guilty pleasures. The perfect way to celebrate the festival turning 18!
The live music stages are free to enter and no tickets are required. But you can quench your thirst at one of the bars while you sing along to your favourite tunes.
As if this wasn’t enough, there’s The Afterparty with Gok Wan & Co to tuck into in the Albert Halls Theatre on Saturday evening.
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A full seven hours of house and dance classics from not only Gok Wan himself but a feast of well-known guest DJs including Phats & Small, Sweet Female Attitude and Rio Fredrika.
Family entertainment
The second day of the annual Bolton Food and Drink Festival attracted hundreds of visitors to the town under beautiful blue skies. Picture by Paul Heyes, Saturday August 28, 2021. / Image: Supplied
Day one of the annual Bolton Food and Drink Festival. Picture by Paul Heyes, Friday August 26, 2022. / Image: Supplied
The family-friend festival encourages parents to bring the kids to try their hand at arts and crafts and join in with fun games, activities and magic tricks, or get their faces painted.
This year, organisers are bringing back the fantastic family zone on Le Mans Crescent, right at the heart of the Festival.
Elsewhere, you’ll find strolling, world-class street performers to keep the party going wherever you are around the town centre, not to mention lots of delicious food and live music.
Tickets
The main festival is free to attend, however, some special events such as the bottomless brunch, Gok Wan afterparty, Faulty Towers and Live and Let Live Dining Experiences do require tickets.
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The majority of the festival’s celebrity chef demos are also ticketed, with standard tickets priced from £15 and concessions available for senior citizens and children under 15.
About Bolton Food and Drink Festival
The North West’s biggest and best food festival, every year Bolton Food and Drink Festival draws thousands of foodies to the Greater Manchester town for a long weekend full of flavours. Last year’s festival welcomed over 450,000 visitors over the four day weekend.
Now in its eighteenth year, it runs every year on August bank holiday weekend across four days. In previous years, the festival has welcomed the likes of Hairy Biker Si King, Ainsley Harriot and festival favourite James Martin.
Featured image – Supplied
Food & Drink
I went on a walking wine tour around Manchester and it might be the perfect afternoon out
Daisy Jackson
If you love wine, and you love Manchester, and you’d quite like to do something with your afternoon that celebrates both of those things, can I put you onto the Manchester Wine Tours?
This genius little event sees small groups of people heading across the city on, essentially, an organised and very sophisticated bar crawl.
Imagine Carnage, but instead of drawing on a t-shirt and slamming neon green alcopops, you’re dressed up nicely and visiting some of Manchester’s top food and drink businesses.
Manchester Wine Tours is owned and operated by Kel Bishop, a local food and drink writer and wine teacher.
Each tour is different, taking in different bars, different wines, and different people.
But as a general rule of thumb you can expect to meet up with Kel somewhere centrally, and follow her to around four different bars, sampling one or two wines in each.
You end up drinking roughly two-thirds of a bottle of wine, unless you get lucky with a small group like ours, where we definitely got a little more than that.
And each tour factors in a few points of interest, in classic walking tour style and for even more of a Manchester flavour.
On the Manchester Wine Tour I joined, our route included a few of the city centre’s newest wine hotspots, starting at Kallos, the fantastic greek restaurant in Salford that’s striving to have the largest collection of greek wines in the UK.
Here we tucked into their divine, puffed-up flatbreads and dips, as well as tinned octopus, all paired with a crisp sparkling Domaine Karanika Brut Cuvee Speciale.
Stop one on our Manchester Wine Tours – Kallos
Then it was on with the big coats for a walk back into the city centre to Sterling.
On a personal note, I’ve been working as a food and drink journalist in Manchester for a decade. I did not expect to have any surprises along the way.
But then Kel led us into the wine room at Sterling – not usually open to the public – and proved me wrong.
Tucked away from the main bar, surrounded by wooden shelves glinting with different wines, we sampled a dry Chenin a New Zealand Lethbridge Chardonnay, and all realised we had been judging Chardonnay far too harshly.
Inside Sterling
It’s at this stop that Kel really breaks down the art of wine tasting, and how to build your understanding of a wine from sight to smell to sip.
Suitably warmed up, it was time for a dash across to Winsome, the new British restaurant that’s already been added to the Michelin guide, where we crammed around a centrepiece of wine bottle candles dripping in wax to discover the delights of the Greek Alkemi Xenomavro rose – my favourite wine from the night that I bought an extra bottle of to take home.
Each stop of the wine tour offers snacks as well as the wines, and for Winsome it was a delicate squash dish picked by the chef to compliment our drinks.
Manchester Wine Tours in Winsome
We also sampled a lethally good Terre de Zeus Xinomavro here – it was a good day for Greek wine.
By this point of the tour we’re like a slightly wobbly gaggle of baby birds, scurrying after Kel towards our final spot for the night – Beeswing.
The Kampus bar provided an Austrian Funkstille Zweigelt (ordered an extra glass of this, it was so good) and a The Good Luck Club Cabernet Sauvignon from the Barossa Valley, plus boards of charcuterie and cheese.
My brain is like a sieve for wine facts (I’ve written up most of this by looking at the labels), but I guess that just means the Manchester Wine Tour will have a repeat customer.
Kel is an expert at reading the room and deftly tailors her tastings to suit each person’s wine experience. For some it’s just the pleasure of drinking a nice wine (here, have a top-up), for others it’s digging into the history and politics of the drink. Some just wanted to uncover a new bar or restaurant, playing tourist in their own city.
It felt as though all seven of us on our tour took something different away from the exact same experience – and is that not the beauty of good hospitality?
It’s all completely accessible, approachable and very, very fun.
You can get FREE food and more at Tesco Christmas Markets across Greater Manchester
Thomas Melia
Tesco Christmas Markets are back and heading to even more Greater Manchester locations where you can try lots of festive items all for FREE.
If you missed it last year, then don’t worry, as Tesco has brought back its much-loved Christmas Markets and the stalls are visiting more locations across the UK than ever before.
We’ve got you covered with all the dates and locations these freebie-filled Christmas Markets are visiting to make sure you don’t catch a case of festive FOMO.
Tesco Christmas Markets will be filled with all your favourite brands you usually fill up your trolley with from the likes of Costa, McCain, Celebrations and more.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a Tesco-led celebration without its own Finest range making an appearance across select Greater Manchester locations.
Expect to sample Tesco Finest Scallop and King Prawn Toast, Tesco Finest Stratford Blue with Fig Conserve and sweet treat staple, Tesco Finest Brandy Butter Mince Pies.
The best-loved brands mentioned before will be offering samples like smooth and creamy cups of Chocomel, or caramel-infused Nutcracker Spectacular drinks thanks to coffee shop chain Costa too.
In terms of food, McCain are letting you crunch down on its latest crisp range Vibes, Celebrations is treating you to its chocolate collection and biscuit varities from Bahlsen.
Tesco Christmas Markets are visiting major Greater Manchester locations giving out lots of FREE food / Credit: Press Shots (via Supplied)
Feeling merry and bright? Alcoholic drink brands 1664 is bringing out its blue bottles, Three Barrels for its XO and VSOP brandies as well as the coffee-infused liquer Drambuie.
If you’re after something to warm up your winter’s day, Costa is also letting you try some of its Home-made Barista style coffees and coffee pod masterminds Tassimo are offering samples of its Cadbury, L’Or, Kenco ranges and more.
Finally, if that wasn’t enough for you, why not clear your palette with a Christmas creation courtesy of teapigs and its caffeine-free peppermint leaves, yum.
Here’s all the important dates and locations for Tesco Christmas Markets 2025 schedule for Greater Manchester and wider regions:
Fri 14 November – Glossop Superstore, SK13 8HB
Sat 15 November – Hattersley Extra in Hyde, SK14 3AU
Sun 16 November – Failsworth Extra in Manchester, M35 0EJ
Mon 17 November – Manchester Gorton Extra, M18 8LD
Tue 18 November – Stockport Extra, SK1 2BT
Wed 19 November – Burnage Superstore in Manchester, M19 1TF
Thu 20 November – Prestwich Superstore in Manchester, M25 3TG
Fri 21 November – Bolton Horwich Extra, BL6 6JS
Sun 23 November – Chorley Extra, PR7 1NW
Mon 24 November – Leyland Extra, PR25 2FN
Sun 30 November – Prescot Extra, L34 5NQ
Mon 1 December – St Helens Extra, WA9 3AL
Tue 2 December – Widnes Extra, WA8 7YT
Wed 3 December – Warrington Extra, WA2 7NE
Mon 8 December – Accrington Extra, BB5 1LN
Fri 12 December – Macclesfield Hibel Road Superstore, SK10 2AB
To view a full list of all the Tesco Christmas Markets locations across the UK and browse all the brands that are taking part you can find everything HERE.
Georgina Pellant -
3rd August 2023 
