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Manchester Food and Drink Festival reveal 25th-anniversary programme for 2022

Think fire pit feasts, a wine and fizz festival, and appearances from some of Manchester's top chefs

Georgina Pellant Georgina Pellant - 22nd July 2022

Manchester Food and Drink Festival will celebrate its 25th year in the city this September with a special roster of events, bringing together some of Manchester’s top chefs as it marks a quarter of a century in the city.

From a host of live fire pit feasts to a dedicated wine and fizz festival at NOMA, there are some exciting events on the horizon for this year’s festival, which will take place this September.

Today, the festival has announced its first wave of events as it prepares to bring its free-to-attend Festival Hub back to Cathedral Gardens.

Image: Supplied

Open from midday to 11.00pm across  15t–18 and 21–25 September, the Festival Hub will become home to an array of street food traders, bars, and artisan producers, as well as various masterclasses and takeovers.

As ever, the festival will bring together some of Manchester’s top eateries with appearances already confirmed from the likes of Michelin-trained Caroline Martins (The Sao Paulo Project), Northern Quarter favourite District, Tast, Mi and Pho, Fazenda, DGHNT and more.

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Elsewhere, there will be an artisan market overflowing with local produce, and a wide selection of local street food traders showcasing the best that Manchester has to offer.

BBQ fire pit feasts

The first ever Festival Fire Pit Takeover will be coming to the Hub for both long weekends. 

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Sponsored by Weber, one of the world’s leading barbecue specialists, the Festival Fire Pit will invite some of the region’s best loved chefs to cook over fire for a first time festival feast. 

Caroline Martins, founder of the Sao Paolo project,  Robert Owen Brown and Francisco Martinez from Fazenda will all be bringing their own specialist BBQ flavours to the fire pit as part of Weber’s takeover.

Read more: A natural wine truck has parked up in Manchester for the summer

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Image: MFDF

Cookery demos, conversations and debates

The Festival Hub at Cathedral Garden will host the Octopus Cookbook Confidential demo kitchen on Saturday 24th September in collaboration with Octopus Books.

Top chefs and industry experts will be coming together to share their tips, ideas and knowledge in cookery demos, conversations and debate discussions.  A full day of foodie demos and panels will include:

●      Kate Humble & Lia Leendertz: The joy of the outdoors – Eating & Cooking with the Seasons

●      Edd Kimber: Pudding Love! – discussing our love of puddings from childhood to becoming professionals and everything in between

●      Pip Payne & Nicky Corbishley: Tips, ideas and hacks for putting dinner on the table every night without breaking the bank

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●      Joe Woodhouse, Josh Katz & David Bez: From the swede to the courgette – why we should all be eating more veg and all the veggie inspiration you could hope for

●      Jeremy Pang: School of Wok Chinese Cooking Demo

●      Rahul Mandal: The Baking Surgery

●      Jaega Wise vs Joel Harrison in conversation with Neil Ridley: Beer vs Cocktails

Some of Manchester’s best-loved chefs will also be joining the Festival Hub to lead cooking masterclasses on the opening weekend of the Festival – a detailed programme will be announced soon!

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Image: MFDF

Artisan food market

The much-anticipated Artisan Food Market will take place across the duration of the Festival, opening 15–18 and 22–25 September from midday to 7pm.

This free-to-attend market will showcase some of Manchester’s best food and drink producers, including New Market Dairy, The Flat Baker and DGHNT.

Beyond the Festival Hub

Away from the festival hub, an array of activities will be taking place across Manchester city centre.

MFDF will be the first event to take place at the iconic New Century in Manchester’s NOMA district to bring the Wine and Fizz Festival to town.

Opening in September, the Wine and Fizz Festival will be the first event to take place in the newly-restored space, giving wine lovers the chance to visit retailers like Cork of the North, Grape to Grain and UKiYO Republic (showcasing their wonderful range of Japanese sake). Tickets are available to buy here.

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Image: MFDF

Across the city for the duration of the festival, MFDF is also curating a lineup of fantastic restaurants to take part in their £25 for 25 years menu collaboration.

Northern Quarter favourite District will be creating an exclusive £25 drinks pairing menu to compliment their amazing Thai cuisine and celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Manchester Food and Drink Festival. 

Read more: The family-run Prestwich bagel shop with queues out the door

Embankment Kitchen is also creating an exclusive £25 menu to give diners a taste of the best of their offering at a reduced price.

Other restaurants taking part include Mi and Pho with a Vietnamese take on the exclusive menu offer, as well as Three Little Words, Shoryu Ramen, Tast and Society, with many more to be announced over the coming weeks.

Feature image – MFDF

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Inside the underground Manchester noodle bar serving Chinatown’s spiciest scrans

Georgina Pellant Georgina Pellant noodle alley

Over in Chinatown, there’s a relatively new little noodle bar that’s been making a big, spicy stamp on the city’s dining scene.

Its owner, Wendy Ren, hails from the Chinese province of Sichuan – a region that’s home to giant pandas, traditional Sichuanese opera, and some of the spiciest food going, thanks to its famous Sichuan pepper.

Also known as the Chinese prickly ash, the citrus-like peppercorn leaves a tingly numbness in the mouth and on the lips that you’ll either love or hate.

It’s an acquired taste, by all accounts – but those who love it can’t get enough. In fact, on my visit during a packed-out Wednesday lunch service, Wendy stopped to chat with an Italian family holidaying in Manchester who had been in to eat three days in a row. Now that’s an endorsement if I ever heard one.

She’s opened the restaurant alongside her Cantonese husband, Ken Chen, but the recipes are all hers – and on our visit she laughs with us about how it has taken him some time to get on board with her spicy food, saying: “he found out pretty quickly that he either eats it or he doesn’t eat at all.”

For big fans of spice, this is fast becoming the absolute go-to spot in Chinatown – and for those who aren’t so tough, don’t worry, because Wendy’s put some things on the menu for you too (and possibly, also, for Ken).

Just taking a moment for the hand-rolled pork dumplings with sweet and spicy chilli oil and minced garlic. / Image: The Manc Eats
Noodle Alley is beautifully decked out in red and green with little nods to the famous wide and narrow alleys of Chengdu. / Image: The Manc Eats

Called Noodle Alley, the restaurant is tucked away underground on Faulkner Street and beautifully decked out in red and green with little nods to the famous wide and narrow alleys of Chengdu.

Formerly home to China City, a real old-school Chinatown legacy restaurant, the space has a special place in Wendy’s heart.

She tells me that she and her husband used to come and eat here “all the time” when they first started dating, so the location really means a lot to both of them.

Chinatown restaurants aren’t exactly known for their glamorous interiors, and China City, Wendy jokes, was one such place – with the same old carpet, and the same old tables that had been used for the past twenty years.

Now the space is her own, though, it’s markedly different – lovingly decked out in cheerful colours, with little green windows, hanging lanterns, and bamboo rattan paneling on the walls.

Hand-rolled dumplings stuffed with mince pork on their way to the kitchen at Noodle Alley. / Image: The Manc Eats
The end result – drenched in homemade chilli oil and topped with crispy garlic. / Image: The Manc Eats

Her story of getting into the restaurant business is something of an unusual one. Prior to opening Noodle Alley, she tells me, she spent nearly two decades working at The Marriott Hotel.

After seventeen years of service and the birth of her second child, she asked to go part-time but her request was refused – so she quit the very next day, and began building her own route to independence.

It was during the Covid lockdown, she says, that she really got into cooking group meals – making meals for her friends and spending hours in the kitchen busying away happily over her stove.

A friend with several restaurants in Chinatown suggested she start her own business, and the rest – as they say – is history.

Dan Dan noodles are out, apparently, and Su Jiao Mian are in. / Image: The Manc Eats
Burning noodles with preserved vegetables and crushed peanuts. / Image: The Manc Eats

Dish-wise, her menu spans a mouthwatering selection of dry noodles, soup noodles, street food, and small plates, including the likes of deep-fried wavy potato chips with chilli and Szechuan pepper and steamed beef strips wrapped with chilli paste, numbing Sichuan pepper, and five-spiced rice powder.

Dan Dan noodles, the Sichuan dish we probably all know the best, don’t feature – they’re a bit old news now, apparently, and Wendy has some cooler alternatives for us to try.

Read more: This blink-and-you’ll-miss-it basement restaurant in Manchester’s Chinatown serves the ultimate yum cha feast

One is her Su Jiao Mian, a mixture of minced pork, sesame sauce, and house chilli oil, the other is the Wan Za Mian, a fiery mixture of spices combined with minced pork, soft yellow peas, and more chilli which Wendy says is “one of the most popular noodles in Sichuan.”

Apparently, if you’re eating with the cool kids in Sichuan, you should order this. Not one to argue, I dig in – and it’s safe to say her food is pretty damn exceptional. Almost immediately, I’m planning my next trip back.

Two of Noodle Alley’s signature dishes: Steamed beef strips wrapped with five spiced rice powder (back) and ‘saliva chicken’ served cold with special chilli oil, peanuts, and cucumber. / Image: The Manc Eats
Pork knuckle with butter beans in an umami-rich pork bone broth. / Image: The Manc Eats

Other signature dishes here include Wendy’s steamed beef strips, which can be eaten alone or dipped into one of her noodle soups, and a dish of ‘saliva chicken’ – a crunchy, cold, textural dish with steamed chicken, fresh chillis and ribbons of cucumber that sit swimming in a bath of homemade Sichuan chilli oil, so named because it literally makes your mouth water.

We also opt for a dish of pork knuckle with butter beans in an umami-rich pork bone broth. Not one for the faint-hearted, even Wendy seemed a little cautious to recommend this one, but as fans of ‘the weird stuff’ we insist – and it really ends up being a highlight of the meal.

Read more: Top Manchester chef to host special £250 dinner – but vegans aren’t welcome

We end up needing a little help with it. It’s a slippery bugger and I end up wearing a fair bit of the broth. before she returns with a knife and fork to cut it up properly for us.

That broth it’s in, though, is so beautiful I could happily bathe in it. Some might say I did, to be fair. As for the soft, succulent pork meat? When sliced into tiny morsels and dipped into an extra special Sichuan chilli oil she retrieves from the kitchen, is something else entirely.

If this is Sichuan heaven, then I’ll happily stay here forever. From plump hand-made dumplings stuffed generously with flavourful pork and drenched in chilli oil, to chicken giblet soup noodles, there’s so much on the menu I will be coming back for.

And for those who really can’t handle the spice, I guess I’ll be recommending the scallion oil noodles with soy sauce and crispy egg. No matter what you order here, I don’t think you can go too wrong.

Featured image – The Manc Eats

News

Kellogg’s introduces domestic abuse support policy for its Greater Manchester staff

Emily Sergeant Emily Sergeant

Kellogg’s has just introduced a new support policy for its Greater Manchester staff who are sadly victims of domestic abuse.

The company‘s pioneering new support policy means any one of its more than 1,360 employees across the UK who are suffering from the impact of domestic abuse will be entitled to an additional 10 days of paid leave.

On top of this, they’ll also be provided with financial help for an initial legal support meeting, and a one-off payment for expenses and costs incurred for setting up a new bank account, or any other activity that provides employees suffering domestic abuse with financial security.

The support package will be available to all Kellogg’s staff in its Manchester HQ, and those working in its two factories in Trafford Park and Wrexham.

This additional support for those impacted by the devastation of domestic abuse also comes on top of the access to a free 24-hour confidential counselling service and flexible working arrangements that Kellogg’s already offers.

The Kellogg’s factory in Trafford Park / Credit: Kellogg’s UK (via Instagram)

A Kellogg’s employee, who wishes to remain anonymous’, has welcomed the new policy after describing their experience with domestic abuse as “completely isolating”.

The decision by Kellogg’s to introduce the new support measures has also been welcomed by charities.

Michelle Hill, who is the chief executive of the charity Talk, Listen, Change, praised the company for creating “a supportive policy” that comes with a number of “key elements” to enable its staff to feel safe and confident in disclosing domestic abuse.

She added: “The new domestic abuse policy not only commits to supporting employees, but also to increasing awareness of domestic abuse through resources.

Read more:

“We know that the stress and trauma that come with domestic abuse have a profound effect on victim-survivors [and] Kellogg’s has demonstrated, as an organisation, that they are committed to supporting victim-survivors to the best of their ability.”

Featured Image – Kellogg’s UK

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