Hidden above the Michelin-recommended Wood restaurant on First Street is an intimate little eatery with a menu dedicated entirely to cheese.
Launched by Masterchef winner Simon Wood, it’s a certified cheese lover’s heaven.
From blue and stinky to mild, creamy, and soft to hard and tangy, if there’s a particular cheese style that floats your boat you’re more than likely to find it on the 20-strong cheese menu.
Image: The Manc Eats
Called Homage (a mixture of Home and Fromage), it’s Manchester’s (and the UK’s) first-ever fine dining restaurant dedicated to cheese and wine – and it’s rather special if we do say so ourselves.
Since opening last November it’s become one of Manchester’s better-kept secrets, sequestered as it is above the main restaurant in a former private dining room-turned restaurant space.
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Some opt to enjoy a few cheese courses up here after dinner, others come for an entire meal of cheese. Having seen the menus, both options are equally appealing.
Inside, it’s plush and very intimate with space for just 12 covers a night – with a sommelier on hand to advise on the best wine pairings.
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Image: The Manc Eats
You can dine A La Carte style, picking your own cheeses and wines from the extensive list, or opt for a miniature tasting menu from £40 that expertly pairs five different styles together for you.
The kitchen creates all of its own fennel seed crackers, preserves and chutneys in-house, and each individual portion of cheese comes with its own paired chutney, which is specially designed to bring out the cheese’s unique flavours.
Think robust and nutty Nottinghamshire Stitchelton paired with powdered beetroot and beetroot assiete, roasted and blitzed in house; oozing Camembert de Normandie served with bacon, onion and confit garlic; or a triple cream truffle cheese called Brillat Savarin au Truffe and you’ll get the idea.
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Image: The Manc Eats
This is not just any old cheese board with a few token grapes and water biscuits.
We’re talking individual plates of cheese, all with their own specially created pairings. Oh, and, currently, a lovely little cheese and onion-baked bean pie – just to prove they don’t take themselves too seriously.
For those who aren’t quite sure what they like, every cheese on the menu comes with its own flavour profile description and a couple of paired drink suggestions.
You really can’t go wrong. Open in the week from 5pm and from 12pm on the weekends, you’ll find Homage on Jack Rosenthal Street within the First Street development of the city.
Feature image – The Manc Eats
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News
The Boots recycling scheme where you can get £5 off every shop
Thomas Melia
UK high street retailer and healthcare shop Boots has launched an innovative recycling scheme that entitles customers to £5 off their future shopping trips.
If you’re still struggling to come up with a New Year’s resolution, why not try a spot of recycling and earn some money off your next cosmetics shop while you’re at it?
Started in 2020, the Boots Recycling Scheme allows Advantage Card holders the opportunity to get money while also being more conscious about how we recycle our used health and beauty products.
Their third-party app, Recycle at Boots, uses a ‘Scan2Recycle‘ system where users can upload items from various beauty brands by taking a picture of the empty packaging before identifying its form.
This scheme takes items that can’t usually be recycled at home, such as lotion pumps, toothpaste tubes, lipstick, mascaras, travel minis, make-up palettes and more.
Once you have five items approved, head over to your nearest participating Boots store, drop off your empties and scan the QR code on the deposit box.
After you’ve followed all these steps, a voucher will appear entitling you to 500 Advantage Points when you spend £10 in-store at your nearest location, and not only do you have £5 worth of points with your name on it, you’re also an eco-warrior.
There’s even a dedicated section of the app to recycling empty medicine and vitamin blister packs, which gives customers 100 Advantage Points when they spend £5 in-store.
Brilliant.
Credit: Publicity pictures (supplied)
Items dropped into these deposit boxes are taken to MyGroup, a recycling and waste management service which works around the clock to help divert waste from landfill.
These empties will be washed and traditionally recycled into a material called MyBoard, a construction board material most similar to plywood, with lots of different uses.
Nearest Boots locations in Manchester running the Recycle at Boots scheme:
Manchester Market Street – 32 Market Street, M1 1PL
Salford Regent Park – Regents Park, M5 3TP
Manchester Didsbury – 736-740 Wilmslow Road, M20 2DW
The Trafford Centre – 10 Peel Avenue, M17 8BD
Trafford Retail Park – Neary Way, M41 7FN
If you’re up for getting money off your next Boots splurge while also helping recycle cosmetics containers and more, you can download the Recycle at Boots app and find your nearest HERE.
Manchester United issue statement after Bruno Fernandes’ social media is hacked
Danny Jones
Manchester United were forced to issue an official statement following Bruno Fernandes’ social media being hacked.
The Man United star’s digital profile was hijacked in the wake of the defeat to Brighton and Hove Albion this weekend, which saw the Red Devils knocked out of the FA Cup and, it’s fair to say, quite the flurry of activity online.
As if to add insult to injury, with United‘s exit from the competition, a user then commandeered the club captain’s presence to share several fake posts.
With the official Bruno Fernandes X account being targeted following the game, the club had no choice but to respond after several controversial and/or inappropriate posts, not to mention multiple instances of general anti-ownership sentiment.
In case you didn’t see any of the since-deleted posts, besides one understandably troublesome comment which read, “let’s get rid of INEOS“, others were even more provocative/inflammatory.
The comments ranged from everything between messages @ing darts player and United fan Luke Littler to influencers like KSI and Jake Paul.
Offensive language was also present in many of them.
As for the Portuguese midfielder, he also quickly clarified that he obviously had no involvement in the activity; meanwhile, despite plenty of players coming out to apologise for the defeat on Sunday night, the skipper is yet to address the disappointment directly.
The loss to Brighton confirmed that Manchester United will be playing just 40 games for the rest of the campaign – the fewest since the 1914/15 season (i.e. at the outset of the First World War) – which serves as yet another unwanted record for the club of late.
You can see the highlights for the game down below.
It is also likely to have been caretaker manager Darren Fletcher’s final game in charge of the Reds, with an interim replacement set to be appointed imminently following Ruben Amorim’s shock sacking earlier this month.
His predecessor, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, also looked like the frontrunner at one point – and could still be involved in a backroom setup – but The Athletic now has it that Carrick could be is odds-on favourite to be announced before the Manchester derby.
Nevertheless, plenty of supporters still feel the problems remain deeply rooted throughout the club and that a change of personnel among the coaching staff still may not be enough…
Georgina Pellant -
25th March 2022 
