CityLife

Manchester Food and Drink Festival: The lowdown

PANS' PEOPLE: Manchester chefs prepare to take part in the Manchester Food and Drink Festival

YOU’RE probably reading this with your nose assailed with the scents of sizzling, your ears regaled with the merry clink of glasses, you might even be tucking into some gastronomic treat you’ve never encountered before.

Yes, the Manchester Food and Drink Festival 2009 is upon us – an event described at the weekend by a London-centric Sunday paper as possibly the sexiest food festival in the land.

Sexy! CityLife just wants to be enveloped in the warm embrace of its gastronomic delights, to flirt with its Fat Lady star guest Clarissa Dickson Wright (pictured) to have its tastebuds teased by the city’s finest chefs flashing their talents in the MFDF Demonstration Theatre in St Ann’s Square.

If daytime demos in tents aren’t your doggie bag, try after-dark dining in some of Manchester’s finest eateries in the festival-long Dinner In The City series.

Whisky, Wine and Ale all get special attention in their own festivals – respectively in Urbis, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Tate Marquee in St Ann’s Square.

For the sweet-toothed next Thursday is definitely the day for choccy frenzy with a Chocolate Festival organised by those food folk at the Chocolate Café in Ramsbottom and Deansgate, while the same day I’m CityLife editor Neil Sowerby is helping judge Best Chocolate Cake at the ground-breaking Real Food Fair, now in its fourth year at the Whitworth Art Gallery.

Like so many events at this year’s MFDF (which incorporates the separate Chorlton Food Festival and events in foodie rival Ramsbottom) it is very family-friendly with an emphasis on healthy, sustainable, regional food.

That’s very much the focus at the annual Producer of the Year contest on Saturday, October 10, which will be judged by TV legend Clarissa Dickson Wright as well as Henrietta Green of the essential website, foodloversbritain.com.

In the build-up to this The annual Fine Food Market is back in St Ann’s Square until Sunday, October 11 daily from 10am to 6pm.

The following day comes the climax of the festival when the Manchester Food and Drink Awards are handed out at a glitzy do in the Palace Hotel on Oxford Road.

This will be hosted by today’s equivalent of The Two Fat Ladies, the Hairy Bikers. Brave smiles from the gallant locally-sourced losers, cheesy grins from the full-fat cat winners. Enjoy!

The Manchester Food and Drink Festival 2009 runs until Monday, October 12. Visit foodanddrinkfestival.com.