The Manchester Food & Drink Festival gets ready for another great year

The Manchester Food and Drink Festival launched Thursday 23rd July at City Inn Manchester, promising a series of spectacular events to delight the foodie community of Greater Manchester. Starting on October 1st 2009, the festival will run for twelve days showcasing the best food and drink the region has to offer. Once again the organisers have partnered with the most innovative and exciting bars, restaurants and food retail outlets across the city to deliver fantastic events for the regions consumers, which last year attracted over 250,000 people.

The fine food village, a mainstay of the festival, will be hosted in St Ann’s Square acting as a hub of activity throughout the festivities, where a wide and wonderful range of the regions producers will be selling its produce to the general public. A chef demonstration theatre will run alongside the market, with local and celebrity chefs such as Clarissa Dickson-Wright and Michael Caines will be demonstrating how to creatively use the delicious local and regional produce on offer and providing a few tasty tips for foodie fans.

Meanwhile across the city, a host of Manchester’s finest bars, restaurants and delis’ will provide festival goers with unique and signature experiences to enjoy the great hospitality that Manchester has to offer. The Manchester Food and Drink Festival team are still bringing on board participants who would like to deliver exciting events throughout the festival, so if your bar, restaurant or deli would like to make the most of the festival atmosphere, more details are available on the festival website. (www.foodanddrinkfestival.com).

Alongside these fun food events, smaller gastro themed extravaganzas will take place at various city locations, including an ‘independent and local’ wine festival on October 2nd and 3rd, with tutored wine tastings and master classes on offer to educate and titillate Manchester’s palate. The following weekend will see the Real Ale Festival take place in association with CAMRA, where thirty local breweries will offer up their best brews to taste and buy in Albert Square, as well a new for 2009 Whiskey Festival, where a whole weekend will be dedicated to celebrating the great malt.

The festival will close with the Gala Dinner on October 12th, which will announce the winners of the Manchester Food and Drink Festival Awards. The shortlist revealed at the festival launch highlighted the great talent and variety on offer across Greater Manchester, with the Best Newcomer award highlighting the recession beating skills of some of the most exciting new businesses in the industry, with nominations for local and regional focused restaurant Ostara in Chorlton and opulent Asian restaurant Zouk in the city centre. Restaurant of the Year, however, proved the staying skills of Manchester’s excellent longstanding venues, ranging from the prestigious The French at the Midland Hotel to the fantastic skill and imagination on offer at Isinglass in Didsbury.

Phil Jones, executive director of the Manchester Food and Drink Festival, said: ‘This year’s Festival aims to highlight the best of Manchester, focusing more than ever on the great dining and drinking businesses we have here in Greater Manchester’.

Hosted at the Palace Hotel by the Hairy Bikers, the awards will reward those who uphold the great tradition of quality food, drink and hospitality across Greater Manchester, and bring a close to the eagerly anticipated 12th Manchester Food and Drink Festival in style. To vote for your favourites in each of the fifteen categories, visit the festival website and have your say.

For more information: www.foodanddrinkfestival.com.