• Neil Sowerby
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I grow my own, brave the kitchen heat and know my woozy way around a wine list. Welcome to my post-lockdown world…

You may call it a blog if you must. It’s certainly a change of direction I’ve been putting off through years of journalistic hyper-activity. The lockdowns have made me reassess the food and drink I really care about. I feel refreshed and free of restraint. Even so. Please excuse the solipsistic sounding neilsowerby.co.uk. It’s not just about me. More the discoveries I want to share. Read more…

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All the 2022 Manchester Food & Drink Awards Winners – and my blurry green oasis

Back to normal, post-pandemic? Well, not quite. Manchester’s food drink scene faces further unprecedented pressures with the current cost of living and energy crises. Yet the daring, innovative flame still burns bright and hell, do they all…
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Jeremy Lee is right to devote a whole chapter to roots duo Salsify and Scorzonera

Though Samuel Pepys remains the diarist closest to my heart (with a dishonourable mention for the entertaining Alan Clark) it is Pepys’ Restoration contemporary, John Evelyn, to whom I consistently turn in penning my vignettes about food.…
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Climat change! How cosy Covino spawned a wine-driven restaurant in the sky

Up on an eighth floor rooftop with a leaden Manchester skyline all around I’m talking ‘terroir’ with Chris Laidler. He gives me Montagny; I raise him Mercurey. We both agree solidly on Macon in the search for affordable Burgundy wine…
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Why Chicago Lightning has never struck me before… but Joe’s creation is a Sterling effort

Chicago fleetingly came to mind at the launch of Sterling, a new cocktail bar from the Schofield brothers in the basement of Manchester’s Stock Exchange Hotel. All dark wood and sepulchral lighting with illuminated ranks of bottles the backdrop…

Fresh, green and sustainable – how Indy Man and JW Lees are making a great hop leap forward

It’s the beery equivalent of Beaujolais Nouveau – well kind of. I’ve never twigged why, Kent apart, we don’t celebrate the UK’s new ‘green’ hops harvest by brewing with them. Virtually straight from the stalk. It’s a big thing…
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Will ‘Queen Beer’ Jaega go for the jugular in the MFDF battle versus the cocktail kings?

Question. What the devil is the owner of ‘the UK’s toughest pub’ doing at Manchester Food and Drink Festival debating the food matching merits of craft beer over cocktails? Of course, every city boasts a roughhouse contender but the…
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