Food Archives - Neil Sowerby

How Jayasekara’s The Cocochine has brought a unique magic to Mayfair

‘Mayfair isn’t really me’ is an understatement. From Savile Row with its seamless inside leg measurements to Victoria Beckham’s posh frock shop close to where nightingales once sang in Berkeley Square, past Lamborghini and Rolls Royce showrooms and a Sexyfish that looks sexier than its Manchester spin-off, I have always felt a far from gilded fish out of water, ready to be patronised by snooty doormen and their ilk.

Well, I’ve had a W1 epiphany I call my Counter Offensive. It started with a French dip – smoky steak shards and pulled beef with oozing taleggio and pickles on a sourdough base accompanied by a generous boat of gravy. An old-fashioned at my elbow, I took in the busy flame-driven open kitchen from my stool at the new Dover Street Counter, casual offshoot of Martin Kuczmarki’s The Dover, a few doors down, whose schtick these past couple of years has been old school Italian New York. I wasn’t quite channeling my inner Damon Runyon here, but I felt properly looked after and energised ahead of a Yapp Brothers wine tasting half a posh mile away along Pall Mall.

Counters traditionally are the place to accommodate (or stick) a solo diner like myself. I say, bring it on. Especially when your slice of the action is one of the great current restaurants. If Dover Street was a soothing haven The Cocochine was a revelation. My privileged vantage point on one of the seven ‘front row’ seats offered not just insights into the precision ‘fine dining’ techniques on display but also (unique for Mayfair) a portal into background of regenerative farming and true sustainability.

Such a bonus from a remarkable value £39 three course set lunch. OK, the Cocochine chips I couldn’t resist with my farm beef pie main were a £10 add-on, but wine by the glass wasn’t a rip-off (since I was never going to explore the riches of a cellar boasting over 1,000 bottles in good vintages of Tignanello, Vega Sicilia, Ornellaia, Petrus and the like).

Cocochine – hospitable luxury with an astonishing attention to detail

No exotic allegiances in the moniker; it’s what co-founder Ian Jefferies nicknamed his daughter. Still, it feels not inappropriate when chef partner Larry Jayasekara’s ostensibly Francophile menus are infiltrated by the lemongrass and coconut of his native Sri Lanka.

The last time I strayed along Bruton Place it was for a porterhouse and Guinness at the Guinea Grill in the days when Oisin ‘The Devonshire’ Rogers was running this ageless inn. On the other side of the street a four storey Georgian town house was in the middle stages of its drawn-out transformation into today’s 49 cover restaurant – the counter’s seven, 28 in the dining room and 14 in the private room.

After logistical problems not helped by the Covid lockdown, The Cocochine finally opened two years ago, but its gestation had begun when Larry – after a string of kitchen roles with Marcus Wareing, Raymond Blanc, Alain Roux and, in France, Michel Bras – spent three years as head chef of Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus in Belgravia.

It was then that Mayfair gallery owner and legendary suitor of supermodels Tim Jefferies persuaded Larry to showcase his talents at a series of supper clubs, where he pressed him about his future plans. Opening my own restaurant the eventual reply. This from an emigre who had landed in Devon 20 years ago, his first job as a binman, before peeling veg in a Torquay Thai propelled him onto a catering course. The Jayasekara trajectory reads classic rags to riches but he could never have envisaged such a destination, created with a seemingly blank cheque.

Food and drink aside, this is a seriously bravura design destination. Jefferies own art collection is liberally scattered around. Photography is to the fore – the classic likes of Mario Testino, Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon. Upstairs in the private room with its gold lattice ceiling and elaborate mosaics you’ll find his spare Warhols.

Regenerative farming in Northants, special seafood from the Hebrides

Readers of this blog will be aware of my commitment to enlightened grass roots sourcing. Prime example is the Cinderwood Market Garden in Cheshire created from scratch by the Higher Ground team to supply fruit and veg not just their to own Manchester restaurant and siblings Flawd and Bar Shrimp but also fellow new wave independents in the city. Their meat needs are served by Cinderwood neighbours Jane’s Farm and Littlewood’s Butchers near Stockport, a town whose own dining standard bearer Where The Light Gets In holds a Michelin Green star thanks to its own urban sustainable growing programme.

High end London restaurants tend to be less self-sufficient, happy to import from Paris’s Rungis Market and specialist suppliers. The Cocochine is different. Among its investors is Ian Wace, a hedge fund manager who ploughs a different furrow beyond his commercial speculations.

Much of the restarant’s requirements are supplied by Wace’s 1,000 acre Rowler Farm, 60 miles away in Northamptonshire and the rich fishing grounds of Tanera Mòr, an island in the Inner Hebrides he bought and revived a decade ago.

Not that the chef is averse to sourcing luxury ingredients wherever in the world to suit the kind of menu he creates. In the two years ahead of the opening he travelled to 25 countries.

What of the food?

Amazingly no Michelin star yet, but The Cocochine has just been awarded 3 AA rosettes plus a prestigious international accolade – La Liste’s UK opening of the year award 2026 and three gold stars on its 1000 Global List.

This level of attention focuses on the culinary riches of the £189 a head signature tasting menu, a rollercoaster of tastes culminating in the ‘Watalappam’ Sri Lankan Crème Caramel, Crème Fraiche Ice Cream, scattered with Golden Oscietra Caviare, a bespoke less salty version.

My three courser was humbler but enticing. If back in the day Le Gavroche’s £60 a head lunch including a half bottle of good wine was London’s great bargain, this is today’s contender. As with the Roux offering, extra appetisers might crop up. In a the realm of Gougères Larry’s is surely king.

For starter I chose Raviolo of Scottish Lobster in a lime and lemongrass sauce ahead of French Onion Soup with a truffle cheese toastie and for the main rather than Roasted Line-Caught Wild Sea Trout, Seaweed, Bisque it was Slow-Cooked Farm Beef Pie in a perfect pastry casing. Attention to detail: Rowler Farm has its own abattoir and the beef is aged 40 day.

Dark chocolate Cremeux with Sri Lankan Cardamom ice cream completed the lunch. In hindsight I regret not having ordered the Vanilla Ice Cream with Jaggery Caramel having learnt afterwards that half a kilo of fresh Tahitian vanilla for one litre of crème anglaise goes into the glace!

The Simple Philosophy of The Cocochine

Service was warm throughout with the chef patron on hand to explain his philosophy unobtrusively. He once summed it up in an Observer interview: “It’s about looking after the guests, cooking with love and heart and respecting the ingredients. Hospitality means opening your home to friends and family. You cook for days, and then the first thing you offer [when they arrive] is water. I don’t want to have a champagne trolley in the restaurant, because that should not be the first thing offered. I want to offer guests a glass of water and let them come in, get comfortable and relax.

“We always wanted to make it a place where it’s about the level of art and the quality of the ingredients together, so it’s not just a plate of food. It is a whole experience. Everything here is custom-made to fit. Everything is like a jigsaw. Everything has to be matched. Everything has to be exactly how we wanted it: the flowers, the water, the steak knives, the plates, the tiles, the curtains.”

Across Bruton Place you’ll also find simpler sibling, the Rex Deli Restaurant (walk-ins only) which, like the Dover Street Counter, brings a whole new casual spin to Mayfair. It’s never going to be Shoreditch with its tats and beards, but surely that vibe has become a mite wearing.

22 March 2026/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants

Celebrating 20 years of El Gato Negro – cool city prime and brave Pennine gestation

Nine years ago I organised a ‘Tapas Trail’ for the Manchester Food and Drink Festival – a couple of events cherry-picking small plates and wines from seven Spanish restaurants clustering around Deansgate. Even kick-off point the Instituto Cervantes cultural centre was on that very un-Ramblaslike thoroughfare.

Heady days for Iberian cuisine in the city. Three of the participating restaurants (Iberica, Tapeo and Lunya) have since closed, leaving only La Bandera, Evuna and 30-year-old stalwart El Rincon de Rafa… alongside a certain El Gato Negro Tapas (the Black Cat) that was a cool newcomer back then. As I walked up King Street recently to celebrate its 10th anniversary I passed a shuttered-up Tast Catala, which closed down before Christmas after seven years’ trading. Even the combination of a multi-starred Catalan consultant chef and Pep Guardiola among the backers couldn’t keep it afloat.

Up to 2,000 covers a week rising to 2,500 when the outside terrace is open suggest the equally upmarket El Gato isn’t likely to follow suit any time soon. Ditto the Liverpool branch. Leeds, though, has been turned into a Black Cat Club, as has Habas higher up King Street, the group’s fruitless dip into Lebanese cuisine. Canto, a Portuguese venture, remains in Ancoats, now serving more generic Iberian small plates.

How Ripponden got ‘padronised’ by El Gato’s arrival

So the El Gato Negro mini-empire for 2026 is a far cry from chef patron Simon Shaw’s first bold Spanish step on the Pennine moors back in 2006. I think I’m safe in assuming that until this point the village of Ripponden was a stranger to the padron pepper or grilled octopus tentacle. Its gastronomic epicentre in those days was the annual pork pie competition in the Old Bridge Inn (1307).

It was a less historic terraced pub just along the main road converted by Shaw, a Birmingham-born chef with a fine dining cv, and Chris Williams, his front of house oppo from the duo’s London Harvey Nichols days.

Not quite as remote as it sounds, it was on a bus route. There was always the temptation to hike over the moors, though since these were the days before reliable satnavs on mobiles there might be pitfalls. Hence this memory that I recycled for my Taste of Manchester review of the ‘new’ El Gato on King Street:

“The last time I arrived for a meal at El Gato Negro my trousers were caked almost to the knees in farmyard mire (that’s the polite word). I was with two companions, hopelessly lost and then hopelessly late on our naive cross-moor hike to Simon Shaw’s Spanish restaurant. Finally we stumbled upon a pub, restored ourselves copiously with Timothy Taylor Landlord, got a taxi to El Gato and had an outrageously good fish feast. Simpler times.”

The quality of the food made the transition to Manchester under the new investment from Mills Hill Developments. Some quirky elements didn’t – like the paper menu/place mat, where you ticked boxes to give your order. The ebullient Chris Willams had departed long before, leaving Simon to take centre stage, backed by a remarkably talented kitchen team. Notably Matt Healy and Mark Kemp.

Back in 2009 Matt was Simon’s sous chef on Gordon Ramsey’s F Word when El Gato won ‘Best Local Spanish Restaurant.’ He went on to greater telly fame seven years later when he was runner-up on Masterchef the Professionals and these days runs two casual Forde restaurants in Ilkley and his native Horsforth.

Ulsterman Mark has pursued his own ‘global small plates’ vision’ at Engine Social Dining in Sowerby Bridge since 2018. I was the first critic to review it – for Confidentials – and it is arguably the Calder Valley’s great dining success story of the moment. Mark, now 45, (below right) gives huge credit to Simon for really launching his career.

Mark Kemp on the Shaw fire that ignited the El Gato legend

“I had worked in a variety of kitchen jobs around Leeds but never really settled. Then through Matt Healy I was introduced to Simon at El Gato Negro where I knew very quickly this is the real deal. I had never met a chef quite like him, his presence in the room was felt immensely. His eye for detail was impeccable, he knew exactly what everyone was doing. He took no prisoners during service or with prep time and demanded your best at all times, no time for slacking.

“There were days I would hate him all day long but one beer with him at the end of the night and I was back to thinking he was the best again. It was never personal with Simon, he was just passionate and loved his food, his brand, his products and wanted you to learn from your mistakes, do your best at all times never cut corners or become complacent.

“One of the hardest things at El Gato was keeping staff, I was there for three and a half years and it was very hard to attract good chefs and keep them, many came and went in my time there, Maybe because it was in Ripponden and hard to get to or was it the long days and hard work? For almost a year it was me and Simon, Matt had gone to London, another chef Dom to Australia. They left shortly after the Gordon Ramsay F word show and it was the busiest El Gato had been in years.

“Simon used to do a test on chefs when they came on trial and make them fine dice a chilli or a mirepoix, and sometimes the guys would be getting changed back into their clothes and out the door in 15 minutes, which was hard when you would think to yourself, yes a chef, another pair of hands please. I remember getting there at 7am and Simon would sometimes be asleep in the restaurant sat up with a hoover between his legs. He had to clean the restaurant for the next day on the night.

“It was tough but still I look back at my time very fondly and when I left for Shibden Mill Inn never got the same feeling of passion. It was mad at El Gato. I would be cooking seven to eight dishes at once, mini chorizo reducing, Alejandro chorizo, patatas bravas frying in a pan, 2 portions tiger prawns, baby chicken under the grill, chargrilling a quail skewer, while gently basting a monkfish on the bone, bringing them all together one after the other to Simon to plate.

“The man would line up the plates and perfectly send them all out, one after the other, sometimes sending back an over cooked tortilla, ‘eggs too dry – do it again’. Watch that chicken, Mark.! Turn the monkfish. And he wouldn’t even be looking at me. He just knew. The buzz from the kitchen was the best. I’ve never had anything like that until I did the Engine.

“My favourite dishes? There was so many, but I really enjoyed Simon’s version of a paella,. It was really fun to cook. Or his Andalusian fish stew,. Both hard to execute but so bloody tasty. Oh, and scallops a la mallorquina!.”

Looking forward now to El Gato’s third decade

One accolade shared by El Gato in both its manifestations is a Michelin Bib Gourmand. There’s also a constant roster of ingredients, the product of Simon Shaw’s early expeditions to the likes of San Sebastian’s pintxos scene or the Boqueria Market in Barcelona and a 20 year association with the importers Brindisa. Plus a continuing ability to employ native British raw materials without straying too far into fusion territory. France makes a regular contribution, too – Gillardeau oysters, exquisitely saline and fleshy. From family oyster beds in La Rochelle they are chosen because they are the best.

When Simon went back to the stoves in February to prepare a King Street 10th birthday 10 course tasting menu, so many of those usual suspects were there in all their glory. The smoky Alejandro chorizo mentioned by Mark, here served with fondant potato and wood roast piquillo peppers; morcilla that’s a cut above most of of our native black pudding providing the filling for a Scotch egg on a bed of duxelles mushrooms: and the dish that exemplifies El Gato on a plate for me – fried baby squid on black ink rice with dots of avocado puree. Made up for the absence of octopus. Which, as it happens, is the favourite dish of Head Chef Milan Sojka who has been in the brigade for seven and a half years.

A lot of the current team are long-serving. One key figure, though, has departed in pursuit of his own restaurant. Carlos Gomes, former head chef of Michelin-starred Barrafina in London, arrived in 2017, bringing the dishes of his native Portugal to Canto, and in 2023 was promoted to group exec head chef.

Still El Gato Negro has proved itself a sturdy beast. Before decamping to Mulligan’s for a restorative Guinness after hectic hours on the pass he told me: “I’m excited to see us continue to play a part in the city’s thriving food scene, which I genuinely believe is the strongest outside London. I want to keep welcoming future generations through our doors and enjoy continued success, with Milan leading the kitchen.”

My great thanks for many of the pictures used here to Joby Catto www.jobycatto.com, who like me has been an El Gato regular for two decades and straddled both sites as their in-house photographic chronicler.

El Gato Negro Tapas, 52 King Street, Manchester M2 4LY. Items from the 10-course tasting menu will be available as specials from February 23 for one month. Tables can be booked here.

4 March 2026/by Neil Sowerby

Drink, Food, Restaurants

All the winners from the MFDF Awards 2025 on a night celebrating community

The only hospitality awards that really count in Manchester continue to delight and surprise. Now in their 28th year the Manchester Food and Drink Festival Awards returned to New Century Hall for a celebration of the resilience of the city and region in testing times. 18 winners were announced from food and drink establishments with 130 outstanding venues, producers and traders nominated, Standards were incredibly high

On the flip side were the restaurants and bars that went under in 2025. Some were listed by co-host Matt White in his introduction in a poignant reminder of the knife-edge hospitality is on. It was a lovely moment when Neighbourhood Venue of the Year Stretford Canteen paid tribute to fellow nominees fromdown the road, The Perfect Match, who didn’t make it into 2026.

he Restaurant of the Year wasn’t entirely unexpected – Michelin-starred Skof, just a stagger across Sadler’s Yard from last night’s awards venue. Its chef patron Tom Barnes, now in his mid-30s, was once a kitchen prodigy. The same applies to Matt Bennett, named Chef of the Year for his excellence at Prestwich’s The Pearl after sous chef stints at Mana, Ancoats and Gidleigh Park, Devon. Matt’s youthful looks were captured by Stanley Chow in a portrait presented on-stage by the acclaimed artist, who sponsored the category. A new MFDF innovation, it all added to the surprise value for 27-year-old Matt, surely our youngest ever Chef of the Year winner.

Overall sponsor of the Awards was Therme Manchester – in their words, a transformational large-scale wellbeing destination which will feature pools, saunas, waterslides, and wellbeing therapies set to complete construction in late 2028.

As part of the partnership this year’s awards saw the first, ‘Community Food and Drink Project of the Year’ created. This new category recognises and celebrates the outstanding food and drink initiatives making a real difference in Greater Manchester, the prize a £1,000 funding boost from Therme as well as a further £2,000 to kick off a joint legacy project. The inaugural (and well deserved) winner was Platt Fields Market Garden.

Ben Dutson, Head of Food Operations at Therme Manchester is looking forward to continuing their support: “We’re delighted to have sponsored this year’s awards and play a part in supporting and celebrating the brilliant food and drink businesses that make Manchester such a phenomenal place.

“Therme is all about living well and having fun – and making wellness more accessible for the community, so I can’t think of a better way of embodying that than by supporting all the great businesses and community groups that we have recognised tonight.”

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

Restaurant of the Year – Skof

Shortlisted: mana, Adam Reid At The French, Winsome, Higher Ground, Stow, Erst, Cantaloupe, Skof.

Chef of the Year – Matt Bennett

Shortlisted: Rosie Maguire (Higher Ground), Shaun Moffat (Winsome), Adam Reid (Adam Reid at The French), Mary-Ellen McTague (Pip), Patrick Withington (Erst), Jamie Pickles (Stow), Jack Fields (Restaurant Orme), Matt Bennett (The Pearl).

Newcomer of the Year – Stow

Shortlisted: Cantaloupe, Bangkok Diners Club, Kallos Cafe & Wine Bar, Café Continental,Winsome, Royal Nawaab Pyramid, Kung Fu Noodle, Stow.

Bar of the Year – Speak In Code

Shortlisted: Stray, Schofield’s Bar, Red Light, Pray Tell , Renae, Libero, Flawd Wine, Speak in Code.

Affordable Eats Venue of the Year (sponsored by Therme): Double Zero

Shortlisted: Noodle Alley, Pho Cue, Cafe Sanjuan, Hong Thai, Seoul Kimchi, Double Zero, Wow Báhn Mì, Rabbie’s Thai.

Takeaway of the Year – This & That

Shortlisted: Ceresi, Ad Maiora, Home Chinese, Viet Deli, Pancho’s Burritos, Rack, Mughli Charcoal Pit, This & That.

Cafe or Coffee Shop of the Year – Something More Productive

Shortlisted: Cafe Sanjuan, Oscillate Coffee, Federal Cafe Bar, Just Between Friends Coffee, Sipp Coffee, à bloc, The Old Fire Station Bakery, Something More Productive.

Wine offering of the Year – Flawd Wine

Shortlisted: Ad Hoc, Higher Ground, The Beeswing, Salut Wines, Reserve Wines, Where the Light Gets In, Kerb, Flawd Wine.

Food trader of the year – Rack

Shortlisted: The Little Sri Lankan, House of Habesha, Baity, Rita’s Reign, Taiko Ramen, Thatziki, Little Scarfs, Rack.

Foodie Neighbourhood of the Year – Stockport

Shortlisted: Urmston, Levenshulme, Chorlton, Monton, Salford, Altrincham, Sale, Stockport.

Independent Drink Producer of the Year – Track Brewing Co

Shortlisted: Balance Brewing & Blending, Pod Pea Vodka, Stiff Tea Brewing Company, Sureshot Brewing, Runaway Brewery, Seven Bro7hers, Weekend Project Brewing Co, Track Brewing Co.

Independent Food Producer of the Year – Pollen Bakery

Shortlisted: Long Boi’s Bakehouse, Holy Grain Sourdough, Littlewoods Butchers, Lily’s Vegetarian Indian Cuisine, Wong Wong Bakery, Half Dozen Other, Mayya Bakery, Pollen Bakery.

Neighbourhood Venue of the Year – Stretford Canteen

Shortlisted: Fold Bistro & Bottle Shop, The Pearl, Lupo, Cantaloupe, Tawny Stores, The Perfect Match, Gladstone Barber and Bistro, Stretford Canteen.

Pub or Beer Bar of the Year – Marble Arch

Shortlisted: Victoria Tap, Runaway Brewery, City Arms, The Magnet Freehouse, Café Beermoth, North Westward Ho, Track Taproom, Marble Arch.

Great Service Award – Maray

Shortlisted: Tast Catala, Atomeca, Higher Ground, Adam Reid at The French, Federal Cafe Bar, Blacklock, Kallos Cafe & Wine Bar, Maray.

Low or No Offering of theYear – Nell’s Pizza

Shortlisted: Cloudwater Brew Co, Dishoom, Red Light, Blinker Bar, Hinterland, Lina Stores, Speak in Code, Nell’s Pizza.

Community Food and Drink Project (sponsored by Therme) – Platt Fields Market Garden

The Howard and Ruth Award for Outstanding Achievement – Rustica

• As usual, across all categories (bar the last) shortlisted venues were put to the public vote via the MFDF website where thousands of food and drink fans voted for their favourite winner. Scores from a mystery shopping visit, carried out by members of the judging panel, were also combined with the public vote for some of the awards to determine the winners.

27 January 2026/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Travel

A slice of my sweet, sweet sausage? You’ll be tasting a very Catalan dish

Christmas morning and my main present is an electric meat grinder with sausage-making attachments. It has me salivating, but there’s a bronze turkey to be roasted, Gran Reserva Rioja to be uncorked and, among other parlour games, The King’s Speech to be avoided, so road-testing my gadget just has to wait.

Not for long, mind. Before 2026 with its many scary portents clocks in I will have produced some exemplary Merguez sausages using natural casings and lamb shoulder bought locally and the finest Tunisian harissa to be sourced in the UK.

A surprising triumph, but now I’ve now assembled the ingredients to tackle making a more divisive banger. Will I have the nerve to recreate a Catalan speciality I first tasted in Girona? The Botifarra Dolça is a sausage but not as we know it. First up, it is disconcertingly sweet. Down to the presence of sugar and cinnamon in the pork filling. Fittingly, it is offered to me with a slice of caramelised apple from a stall in the city’s El Mercat del Lleó.

I had been expecting to sample the other, savoury, versions of this Catalan rival to Spain’s ubiquitous chorizo, differing primarily through the absence of pimenton. The basic Botifarra Blanca is a coarse textured, white sausage, seasoned with salt and pepper, sometimes enriched with egg, the Negra a blood sausage and the Botifarra de Perol contains offal. But I get the Dolça. It tastes like a combination of mince pie and pork pie. A Marmite moment? Maybe.

My sugar rush along the streets of Girona

As it turns out, it is the sweetest local speciality I encounter during a morning’s sugar rush courtesy of my Girona Food Tour. It started with my introduction to the Xiuxo. It’s the Catalan cousin of the churro but more luscious – a deep-fried, sugar-coated, viennoiserie cylinder filled with crema catalana (custard). It dates back to the 1920s and the Casamoner bakery chain is a good place to sample it.

Across the Carrer de Santa Clara there’s further sweet temptation from the Rocambolesc Gelateria. Think an ice cream-led spin-off of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, harvesting the creativity of a three Michelin star pastry chef.

Hugely popular, it launched over a decade ago at the time when founder Joan Roca and his elder brothers Jordi and Josep saw their En Celler San Roca twice named World’s Best Restaurant. Quite a contrast Rocambolesc’s cartoonish backdrop for a riotous assembly of toppings for their soft-serve ices. Despite the day-glo all ingredients are natural. The fun element ramps up with the popsicles, where 3D moulds are used to make fantastical creations. Who fancies a polo (popsicle), made from strawberries and rosewater and shaped like Jordi Roca’s nose?

Origins of the Botifarra Dolça and what to do with it?

20th century Catalan writer Josep Pla ascribed the Botifarra Dolça’s origins to the medieval monasteries, which makes more sense than linking such a pork-based product to flavours associated with the Muslim Conquest (Girona is home to beautifully preserved Arab Baths).

What we can be sure is there few cultures more inventive in their sausage production. In his magisterial Catalan Cuisine: Europe’s Last Great Culinary Secret (Grub Street, 1997) Colman Andrews identifies 17 officially recognised varieties.

Traditionally they were made in farmhouses in the pig-slaughtering season before winter, now the commercial varieties are available all year round.

The straight Bottifara is the one you find grilled with white beans or wild mushrooms, useful too as a stuffing. The sweet version offers more of a challenge, usually being served off-puttingly as dessert. When raw it is bright pink; when left to dry it is a pinkish grey. Grill them, fry them, combine with apple.

The Empordà wine region, north of Girona and inland from the Costa Brava, is particularly proud of its food specialities, awarding them the Productes de Empordà seal of approval. There alongside Palamos prawns, Pals rice, and the ricotta

cheese from Fonteta sits the sweet Botifarra.

Will my Yorkshire Botifarra Dolça live up to such billing? Will I really get the taste? Will my dinner party guests, surprised by their sausage surprise dessert?

The recipe I’ve lifted from the ‘Provincial Guild of Charcuteros and Butchers of Girona’ uses 2.5ks of pork, 2kg (yes, 2kg) of white sugar, the rind of 2.5 l3mons, 25g of salt and and and 3g of cinnamon.

What is worrying me is this instruction: “This mixture must rest between seven and 15 days. If it were directly placed in the gut at the end it would explode due to the volume increase that occurs when the meat releases water and absorbs the sugar.”

Watch this space!

20 January 2026/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Travel

Hot lemons! Lonely Planet’s ready Med answer to those January blues

Baltic, Gothic, Brothers Grimm, Hanseatic League, pagan forests, schnapps and herring – I have increasingly bought into Jonathan Meades’ championing of what he called the Magnetic North in his 2008 BBC documentary with that title. This spring I’ll be off to Utrecht and Lübeck – and hopefully my beloved Berlin – to further consecrate my soul to Northern Europe.

Meades’ brilliant two-parter was a defiant debunking of our British obsession with its polar opposite, the Mediterranean: “The South; we all want to be there. It’s an ideal that draws us to it. It’s a mythical place …The south causes the North to suffer a collective delusion about itself, we deny our Northern-ness. We deny it to such an extent we’re unfamiliar with those countries which share our climate.”

His splenetic case against the Med was amplified when he included the full text in his selected essays, Pedro and Ricky Come Again (Unbound, £30).

“To Britons today the south is exuberant vines, guiltless hedonism, excitable olives, the immemorial ruins of immemorial civilisations, primary-coloured emotions. It’s a promised land. We vertically tan in order to look southern – oranges do come from the south, from Valencia and Seville. And, of course, an orange patina covers up blue skin when you’re wearing next to nothing in snowbound Newcastle because you believe you’re still in Ibiza. Or wherever.

“British architects are forever going on about remaking run-down Pennine towns as Tuscan hill villages. Barnsley is really San Gimignano. Todmorden is uncannily akin to Pienza.”

I take his ironic point as I consider this in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, my home town for 40 years (and never likely to match Pienza’s UNESCO World Heritage status). Still we have miraculously avoided snow bombs and 99mph winds to rock up on a January Monday morning that is undramatically penumbral and drenching.

In front of me is The Mediterranean (£37.50 from any good bookshop or via this link), a siren call tempting me to Meades apostasy. A coffee table extravaganza whose 250 beautifully illustrated pages explore the “stories and secrets of the Mediterranean Coast”.

At my elbow I have a “beaker full of the Warm South”, a glass of Xinomavro red from near Thessaloniki – one of the Lonely Planet’s top seven off-the-beaten-track destinations in this new publication. Here is my own verdict on Greece’s second city , praised by Lonely Planet for its “bar hopping culture and gastronomy rivalling any in the Med.”

The other cities in focus include marvellous Med melting pots that have higher profiles – Marseille (where the contradictory Meades himself now lives) and Napoli. My digital report on the city of Maradona, Margherita and Vesuvius has vanished into the ether, but for me offshore Ischia (and its wonderful lemons – main picture) was the kind of island surprise that features heavily in this book. Which bizarrely neglects this setting for The Talented Mr Ripley – shame on them.

So what exactly is Lonely Planet celebrating?

Not all the obvious over-touristed destinations and when it does feature them it is keen to stray off the beaten track, enlisting a cast of local chefs, architects, curators and craftspeople – to “share their secrets” of 30 different cities. The scope is ambitious, so surface scraping is inevitable, but it had this much-travelled reviewer jotting down a bucket list. Put me down for an abundance of lemons, olives and wine.

Who knows? In 2026 or 2027 I might find myself in another of the ‘magnificent seven’, Brač off the coast of Croatia. relaxing by the Adriatic on the stunning Zlatni Rat beach, or hiking to Vidova Gora, the highest point in the Adriatic islands. If city breaks aren’t your focusThe Mediterranean also suggest 15 weekend-long road trip itineraries.

In these difficult times globally it is good to be reminded of the wonders of intelligent, independent travelling. When the Med has so much to offer who needs the hassle of Trump’s hostile American borders? I for one won’t be renewing my Esta any time soon.

• All the images are my own (apart from Thessaloniki), not from the book

12 January 2026/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Travel

East Neuk is unique – that’s why I’m dreaming of a Fife Christmas

Always, always, ‘Next Christmas we’re going to celebrate beyond the confines of home, that’s the plan.” And always we dust off the tree, have a heritage turkey (or goose) delivered to the door and I somehow defy frazzling in a long kitchen stint, where I inevitably overcook the roasties… etcetera.

A family commitment for the ages, it won’t be any different this year. Toasts will be raised to missing friends and a special one to Captain Smidge, the gourmet chihuahua, who left us in June 2023. We finally scattered his ashes on his favourite stretch of path above the Colden Valley on my wife’s birthday last summer (Champagne was involved).

He was always a Christmas dog (yet not just for Christmas). For various festive therapy reasons he suffered being dressed up as Santa or an elf, but we placated him with chunks of his favourite partridge or pheasant. One Boxing Day on our head-clearing amble to Hebden Bridge a daft whippet off the leash bundled him into the canal. He enjoyed drying off in the pub and being made much of by strangers. He made friends easily.

Which brings us to the East Neuk of Fife. Smidge never made it there. It was made for him. Our stay on that stretch of the Scottish coast was to be the perfect dog-friendly travel writing assignment. Then 10 days before, his 16-year-old heart gave out. We went ahead with our glamping booking outside beautiful Crail with his beautiful ghost by our side over four blazing June days.

It enabled us to make the most of the Fife Coastal Path, but we wished he could have scuttled by our side. Our favourite spot (main picture, above) was the tip of Ruby Bay – home to the impossibly romantic legend of naked bather Lady Janet Anstruther. Full story to follow!

There’s still much of the 117 mile path to tackle. Now that’s an incentive to return.

A December up there will inevitably be different. The latest plan, is to celebrate Christmas 2026 in a sea view cottage I’ve got my eye on. In Crail, jewel in this necklace of colourful fishing villages strung along the North Sea coast below St Andrew’s. King James II of Scotland described them as “a fringe of gold on a beggar’s mantle”.

Ideally there would be a log fire… and a couple of local lobsters and South African Chenin Blanc in the fridge. And, of course, the Captain’s spirit will be vividly with us. Ghost of Christmas Always Present (without the costume, I promise, Smidgey).

Just 10 miles separates Elie (closest town to Ruby Bay) in the south to Crail in the north with buses every hour if you want to walk some of the loveliest stretches of the Coastal Path without doubling back on yourself. Let me introduce you to Crail, Cellardyke and Anstruther, St Monans and Elie/Earlsferry…

A quest for the wholly Crail

This is golfing country. The two courses at the tip of Fife Ness belonging to the Crail Golfing Society, seventh oldest club in the world. It was founded in 1786 by 11 solid citizens in the Crail Golf Hotel, still there on High Street, offering a fine example of the town’s predominant 17th century architectural style, crow-stepped gables, often whitewashed. These, pantiled roofs and mature tree-lined avenues lend a very continental feel to the place. Given a royal charter by Robert the Bruce in 1310, Crail was an important medieval trading post, despatching cargoes of coal, textiles and salted herring to the Low Countries.

Gaze up at the weathervane above Crail Tolbooth’s Dutch tower and instead of the customary cockerel you’ll find the shape of a ‘Crail capon’. These were haddock smoked traditionally in a chimney ‘lum’. There’s an auld Scot expression “lang may yer lum reek” (long may your chimney burn), wishing you long life.

Wander down to the sheltered harbour along cobbled streets, taking in the colourful courtyard of Crail Pottery. Or approach via Castle Walk, which gives you the best photo opportunity. At weekends in season Reilly Shellfish Shack will sell you freshly landed and cooked crab and lobster.

Ancient Cellardyke and newbie Anstruther

A storm at the end of the19th century trashed atmospheric Cellardyke’s own harbour, so the herring fleet shifted down to adjacent Anstruther (pronounced Anster). Today the bobbing boats are mostly pleasure craft and there are two terrific tourist magnets. The Scottish Fishing Museum is a hugely informative portal into a life at sea that even today is fraught with peril We took coffee in its smart cafe as we awaited our morning Sea Safari with Isle of May Boat Trips.

From £30 a head you get a one hour 15 minute seaborne circuit of this National Nature Reserve, six miles out in the Firth of Forth, with informed commentary from the skipper. The craft, a rigid inflatable, holds 12 and hits some impressive speeds to add a thrill element, but the real reason to visit May is the wildlife. It has a history involving monks, vikings, smugglers and a lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s dad, but all play second fiddle when, as we did, you come upon basking seals, a cormorant colony and cliffs teeming with guillemots, terns, razorbills and the uncommon black-backed gull.

Star of the show, though, has to be the puffin (one collective name an ‘improbabilty’). These colourful, comical birds arrive on the Isle in April and depart by the end of summer; we caught them at their zenith, surfing the choppy waves then upturning into the deep in search of sand eels and the like. In the distance a real bonus – a minke whale briefly cresting the waves.

All that fresh sea air and spume had unleashed the inner gannet in us, so after disembarking we piled into the award-winning Anstruther F ish Bar. The battered haddock and chips were as good as it gets – believe the hype. It’s not the only Premier League chippie in town but, as elsewhere, the tradition is under threat. Read Tom Lamont’s quite brilliant East Neuk-centric long read in The Guardian.

Traditional pubs may be struggling too and in truth this isn’t good cask beer territory, but the Fife Gold was in fine, foamy fettle in the secluded garden of The Dreel Tavern, which dates back to the 18th century. As does so much of Pittenweem, next stop on the trek, the last working harbour.

Pittenweem is a quirky delight

St Fillan had his own version of a phone torch. His left arm mysteriously lit up, allowing him to accomplish his seventh century holy tasks in his cavern tucked into the rock face off Bruce’s Wynd, the steep descent to the harbour. You pay a quid for a key at the Pittenweem Chocolate Company or The Little Gallery on High Street. St Fillan’s Cave is a mite underwhelming like Father Ted’s Holy Stone of Clonrichert, but overall I liked the understated charm of Pittenweem, a great place to putter around. Life beyond fish and chips? Gentrification on the way? The smart harbour front Dory Bistro and Gallery is one of the Good Food Guide’s 100 Best Local Restaurants.

Or if you just fancy a picnic pick up some cheese from the St Andrews Cheese Company from their farm just outside the town. Their Anster cheese is handmade to a traditional recipe using unpasteurised milk from their Friesian Holstein cows.

Salt of the earth on the way to St Monans

In the 1790S, salt was Scotland’s third-largest export, after wool and fish. Local coal heated the evaporation pans where sea water was boiled into sea salt. At the end of the mile and a half coastal walk from Pittenweem you encounter the St Monans Windmill, used to pump up the water. Almost ancient history now – the industry was abandoned in 1823. The settlement itself takes its name from a 9th century hermit who landed here and built a cell; later a Dominican monastery sprang up and, tucked into the cliffs above the waves, the Auld Kirk (1256) is among Scotland’s most ancient churches. We were keen to see the famous 18th-century model of a ship suspended from its ceiling, but the great door was locked.

The multi-coloured seafront of St Monans proper is very much of today, a perfect seaside retreat. A good place to chill with small plates, coffee and craft beer is the Giddy Gannet, but the real foodie draw is East Pier Smokehouse on the quayside, painted a vivid powder blue. To sit on its top deck terrace with the sea lapping behind you and a large whole lobster to yourself (great value at £50) is crustacean bliss. It comes in a cardboard box with proper chips or potato salad and implements to lever the tastiest bits from crevices. Chef patron James Robb smokes seafood Scandinavian-style in the downstairs kitchen and everything on the menu is desirable, down to the well-chosen wine and beer offering.

Elie – here life really is a beach

What saves St Monans from the crowds is the lack of a beach. Ellie makes up for it with its sweeping demerara coloured strand that attracts the affluent weekenders up from Edinburgh. You can appreciate its vastness from the terrace of the excellent Ship Inn. More sheltered is Ruby Bay on the approach. This was where in the 1770s the beautiful Lady Janet Anstruther indulged in naked bathing from Lady’s Tower on the headland (nowadays a gaunt ruin). A bell-ringer paraded through town to warn ’no peeking’ at this wild swimming pioneer.

‘Good walk spoiled’ and all that, the town and its extension Earlesferry draw in the golfing crowd to two acclaimed courses. My own personal magnets lie on the A917 coming in – all of them foodie, naturally.

First there’s the top quality Ardross Farm Shop (access also from the Coastal Path), then one of Scotland’s best seafood merchants, David Lowrie, on an industrial estate on the fringe of St Monans – it supplies Manchester’s wonderful new Bar Shrimp – and finally the food and culture complex called wryly Bowhouse.

Rising from flat fields, it resembles a gargantuan barn. The small food and drink businesses occupying spring into life mostly from Thursday onwards, though the impressive organic butchery is open from Tuesday.

On the second weekend of each month Bowhouse hosts a popular market with traders streaming in from across Scotland, but it is also home to regulars such as the Baern Bakery, Scotland the Bread’s flours and much more. Central to the whole project is Futtle organic brewers They run a taproom, vinyl stall, bottle shop for artisan ciders and natural wine, alongside a catalogue of DJs and performers. They also brew unfiltered beer flavoured with foraged seaweed or yarrow and a green hop pale ale from “fresh, Fife-grown organic hops, which went from the bine into the beer on the same day.” Coolest kids on the Neuk? You got it.

Where to have our Christmas feast if the dream comes true

The best place in East Neuk has to be the Kinneuchar Inn, which recently came in at No.2 in the Good Food Guide’s Top 100 Pubs. This whitewashed 7th century hostelry lies a couple of miles north of Elie. Its logo references the local custom of curling on the frozen waters of nearby Loch Kilconquhar. A much better idea is to curl up in the Inn and enjoy chef patron James Ferguson immaculately sourced, daily changing menu. Seafood, as you’d expect, is a star attraction. They are closed on Christmas Day but this year’s Christmas Eve menu offers the likes of Chargrilled Inshore Squid & Skordalia, Rotisserie Lamb Leg & Tzatziki or Baked Cod & Roast Red Peppers. Who needs turkey? Well, perhaps Captain Smidge might have preferred it.

For full tourism information on the area visit Welcome to Fife.

22 December 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Travel, Wine

My Italian Food Trail: Peposo (don’t stint on the peppercorns)

Scuse, my Peposo is inautentico. It’s the chopped San Marzanos that are the culprits in this. Tomatoes hadn’t made their arrival from the New World when this famous Florentine beef stew first sprang to prominence in the 15th century, promoted by Renaissance man incarnate Filippo Brunelleschi. This and the tiled dome of the city’s Cathedral are his lasting legacies.

In a week’s cooking schedule that began with the daring spice fusion of two Gurdeep Loyal dishes this Peposo was earmarked as a bowlful of Italian authenticity. And, yes, as I was preparing it UNESCO designated the whole of Italian cuisine as an intangible cultural heritage.

Such recognition is never likely to address the tangle of Asian Second Generation food strands found across Leicester-born Gurdeep’s two cookbooks. I reviewed the latest, last summer, but it was from his debut, Mother Tongue, that I yoked together Curry Leaf, Lemongrass and Aleppo Pepper Chicken and Sambhar Sweet Potato Hasselbacks with Red Leicester. Neither was what you would call a shy, retiring dish.

Still there seemed to be some distant affinity with the work-in-progress Peposo. The Tuscans are reticent about spicing, just as they eschew salt in their bread, and beloved pasta dish Cacio e Pepe is rather subtle with the the Pepe. Not so Peperoso. Some recipes recommend insane amounts of black peppercorns giving a real kick to a dish of markedly few ingredients – olive oil, red wine, garlic, salt and stewing beef. Note, no onions or herbs.

Nothing but shin beef will do – discuss

A purchase of two kilos of Belted Galloway shin beef on the bone from Littlewoods of Heaton Chapel was a kind of cart before the horse inspiration. The roasted bones had contributed molten bone marrow – a freezer staple for lubricating home-made burgers in the future – and helped make a goodly quantity of beef stock, too. The chopped up beef was perfect for the long stewing required for the Peposo.

It’s a stove-top, pan-off operation where the Chianti (a whole bottle for 800g of meat) evaporates and enriches it. Even richer with the two cans of quality tomatoes, which I stand by.

Two stalwart UK champions of Italian food, Jacob Kenedy (Bocca di Lupo) and the late, great Russell Norman (1965-2023) go big on tomatoes in their versions. I went with Russell’s because his Brutto: A (Simple) Florentine Cookbook (Ebury Press, £32) proved an invaluable companion during last year’s travel-writing expedition to to the city. In particular it introduced me to the challenging street food tripe, Lampredotto for Confidentials. And yes I am now a fan of that braised tripe from the cow’s fourth stomach, doused in salsa verde, on a bun.

You won’t find it on the menu of Norman’s Trattoria Brutto in London’s Smithfield, but Peposo’s usually an option. In the preamble to his recipe (included later) he describes it as “a dish of extremely deep flavours and comforting textures. But it’s not a preparation that can be rushed. You need at least four hours, preferably more, and – as with many Tuscan recipes – it is improved by leaving it overnight. I’d love to be able to say you can use an alternative cut if you can’t get hold of beef shin, but it really must be shin. And you must leave the fat on – do not be tempted to trim. Your butcher will always be able to provide shin, even if your supermarket can’t.

“Additionally, the wine element needs to be appropriately regional. Chianti or even a standard Sangiovese, will provide much better results than a cheap New World Merlot from a petrol station.’

I used Lidl’s standard Chianti Riserva, Corte Alle Mura. Fort £1.50 more they have a Christmas special on, from the same 2019 vintage, Medici Riccardi for a couple of quid more.

Russell’s version is actually rather modest with its pepper input. As it melted together over the long stew I ground extra peppercorns (Kampot, of course) into it. The result was a tasty marvel, which I first served with Judion beans in a tomato and sage sauce, the next day with a creamy celeriac and apple mash. Accompanying it then, a Fontodi Chianti Riserva (a ste up from Lidl). Each time we scooped up the rich juices with slices of Todmorden-baked baguette Tuscan-style. In Florence they have a saying for it: ‘fare la scarpetta’, which translates as “to do the little shoe”

Brunelleschi and a Duomo built on peppery beef stew

The acknowledged birthplace of Peposo is in Impruneta on the Arno, 15 miles south of the centre of Florence, where the Chianti vineyards really start. At the end of September ‘Peposo Day’ is an important part of the town’s flamboyant Grape Festival with local cooks battling it out to produce the best version.

Why Impruneta? It’s all down to the terracotta industry that has been there since the Middle Ages. Its furnaces baked the burnt-red roof tiles used in the construction of Florence’s Doumo. The workers exploited the front of the kilns to slow cook in orci (olive oil/grain jars) poorer cuts of meat with pepper and wine for their daily repast.

On his Impruneta visits the Duomo’s architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, became a fan of this Peposo with its peppery kick and twigged how this slow food could become fast food for his work team high up in the scaffolding.

It would save valuable minutes if they ate on the job rather than clambering down and back up each lunchtime, so he ordered the Peoposo to be transported by wagon to Florence in terracotta casseroles, then hauled up to scaffold canteens. Not sure if the abundant red wine also winched up was a good heath and safety idea…

Peposo the Brutto way

Ingredients

100g lard (or butter if you’re afraid of lard)

800g beef shin, cut into small chunks

Flaky sea salt

1 bottle of Chianti or Sangiovese

2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced

2 tbsp black peppercorns

2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

Black pepper

Sourdough bread, for serving

Method

Melt half the lard in a very large frying pan and sear the meat on all sides until nicely browned. Add a few pinches of salt during this process. You may need to fry in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan. If there is a dark residue at the bottom of the frying pan, deglaze with a splash of red wine. When all the shin is brown, transfer to a very large saucepan in which you have melted the remaining lard. Add the sliced garlic and the peppercorns, and stir for one minute. Now add the chopped tomatoes and the rest of the wine. Bring to the boil briefly, then reduce to a very low simmer.

For the next four hours, keep half an eye on your Peposo to make sure it’s not drying out too quickly. If it is, cover it, but the full bottle of wine should have been sufficient to keep it stew-like. After four hours, check the seasoning and adjust if necessary. The beef shin will have disintegrated somewhat and become stringy and soft. You can encourage this further with some hearty wooden-spoon action. If it hasn’t, leave it longer. Or you could let it cool and leave it covered overnight. Then give it another 30 minutes on a medium heat the next day.

Serve with hunks of sourdough or unsalted Tuscan bread.

19 December 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Travel

Hrishi Desai – what makes this great Cumbrian-based chef patron tick?

It was my first visit to the Farlam Hall hoterl near Brampton in Cumbria. For, of all things, a one-night-only 14-course dinner collab with Carlisle-based crime writer MW Craven. For it chef patron Hrisikesh Desai created dishes inspired by plot elements in the best-selling Washington Poe book series. Craven’s table-side commentary was illuminating, the whoe menu astonishingly playful and inventive.

You could see why, after just two years of Hrishi in situ, the accolades are building. In the recent Condé Nast Johansens Awards Farlam’s Cedar Tree was named UK Restaurant of the Year, while in the Top 50 Boutique Hotels list the Hall has just leapt 25 places to No.11, only five spots behind Lakes game changer Gilpin. That was Hrishi Desai’s previous Cumbrian billet, where he gained his first star for its SPICE restaurant. Cedar Tree’s was awarded within a year of his arrival.

To confirm Cedar Tree’s status, the globally influential La Liste Top 1000 Restaurants has ranked it among the UK’s best. Easy to see why on the evidence of our meal. I caught up with Indian-born, much-travelled Hrishi to quiz him on the success of his Cumbrian bolthole…

Hrishi, the whole ‘Murder Mystery and Michelin Stars’ event was sheer joy. How important is that sense of playfulness in the kitchen?

“Playfulness in cooking is incredibly important to me. It brings something fresh and memorable to the dining experience — something a guest will truly never forget. It also gives us the freedom to bend the traditional rules of gastronomy and bring to life ideas that might otherwise seem too unusual to attempt.

“Take the ‘Spaghetti alla Vongole’ pudding, for example. Deliberately designed to challenge expectations — sweet spaghetti, passion fruit cream, and a classic chocolate mousse re-imagined in the shapes of shells, conches, and clams. Or the ‘Severed Fingers’, a herb butter shaped like fingers. Serving something like that requires courage, but it also sparks curiosity and delight.

“At Farlam Hall, almost 54 per cent of our diners return, and a big part of that is their enjoyment of this playful approach to food. They appreciate that while we’re rooted in a classic country house style of cooking, we elevate it with global influences — spices from around the world, Japanese marination techniques, European fermentation skills, and more.

“We always aim to be different, but never at the expense of the fundamentals. No matter how playful the presentation or concept becomes, our core goal remains the same: solid, skilful cooking with real depth and craftsmanship on the plate.”

Local produce is on every chef’s lips. Sometimes it’s lip service. From the evidence of our dinner, it is very important to you. What does Cumbria bring to the plate?

“Cumbria is blessed with some truly exceptional producers, and for us it feels completely natural to use their ingredients as much as possible. The region offers an extraordinary range of produce — Herdwick lamb, rare-breed pork, artisan cheeses, incredible dairy, heritage vegetables, and foraged ingredients that change with the seasons.

“We’re also surrounded by farmers, growers and makers who are deeply committed to their craft, many of whom have skills passed down through generations. That depth of knowledge and care is part of what makes Cumbrian produce so special.

“I would also like to see our own kitchen garden reach its full potential, because we already use so much of what it produces. Being able to pair what we grow here with what our neighbouring producers craft — from honey and rapeseed oil to organic vegetables, game, cured meats and small-batch spirits — creates a uniquely Cumbrian identity on the plate.

“Ultimately, Cumbria’s natural beauty is reflected in the quality of its ingredients. The landscape shapes the flavour: clean air, rich pasture, rugged coastline and forests full of wild herbs and mushrooms. For us, cooking in Cumbria means tapping into this landscape and celebrating it. It’s not about paying lip service to ‘local produce’ — it’s about letting the region speak for itself through the food.”

Hearing all this, it seems you are really settled here. What are your ambitions for Farlam Hall and your own career?

“Farlam Hall means a great deal to me. It has taken a huge amount of hard work to restore it to its former glory, and we have no intention of stopping there. Karen and I believe that Farlam should stand as a beacon of classic British hospitality — one of the true ‘go-to’ destinations in the North West of England.

“We have ambitious plans for the future, and we hope that the financial climate will allow us to bring them to life. These include developing a cookery school, creating a dedicated treatment space for yoga, sound therapy and meditation, adding a few more rooms, and opening a second restaurant.

“For me personally, this feels like just the beginning. Farlam Hall is a long-term project that we want to keep growing, refining and elevating. The aim is not only to strengthen the hotel’s reputation, but also to continue evolving in our own career through creativity, innovation and a commitment to excellence, supporting the team and local community.”

Which chefs have been your main influences? Your own Indian heritage is obviously important but the traces are restrained. Is that the aim?

“There are many chefs who have influenced me throughout my career. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet most of them — including the Roux family, Thomas Keller, Hywel Jones (whom I worked with for almost 12 years), Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay. I also draw a lot of inspiration from the new generation of British chefs such as Mark Birchall, Lisa Allen and Adam Smith, whose creativity constantly pushes boundaries.

“Across Europe, chefs like Hélène Darroze, Anne-Sophie Pic, Olivier Roellinger, Björn Frantzén and Rasmus Kofoed have shaped my thinking through their subtlety, precision and ability to create deeply memorable dining experiences.

As for my Indian heritage, it is a big part of me. You’ll always find a gentle thread of Indian-Asian influence in my food, and that subtlety is very much intentional. What I don’t want is to be labelled as a chef creating Indian fine dining or ‘progressive Indian’cuisine — that’s not what I’m doing. Instead, I’m drawing on my roots in a way that complements the broader culinary style we aim for at Farlam Hall.”

Just before our recent dinner at Farlam I saw that you had been away in Mexico on a 10 day Roux Brothers Scholarship trip, where he and fellow alumni accompanied Michel and Alain Roux. Can we expect that experience to impact on your menus?

“I found that Mexican food — and its culture — has a surprising amount in common with Indian cuisine. So travelling through the Yucatán and discovering those parallels in flavour wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it was incredibly inspiring. I brought back a range of Mexican chillies, and we’ve already started experimenting with them in the kitchen. I’m sure you’ll begin to see subtle touches of Mexico appearing in some of our dishes over the coming months.

“One of the biggest revelations for me was the Mexican mole (a dark stew). The depth and complexity of its flavours were extraordinary, and recreating it here will be a real challenge — but one I’m excited about. I think a refined version of mole could pair beautifully with game birds or robust, meaty fish. It’s definitely something we’ll be exploring further.

I have to ask. What are the big challenges ahead for hospitality with precious little positive support from government?

“This is a question that opens Pandora’s box for me, because it touches on something that genuinely frustrates many of us in hospitality. I appreciate that any government faces enormous pressures and competing priorities, and we do have to allow space for that. But at the same time, when respected business leaders across hospitality, farming, tourism and the wider supply chain are repeatedly warning that the sector is on its knees, it becomes difficult to understand why these voices aren’t being heard.

“Hospitality is one of the UK’s biggest employers. It supports local economies, revives rural communities, sustains farmers and independent producers, and brings millions of visitors to regions like Cumbria. Yet rising costs, staffing shortages, and an inflexible tax framework are putting businesses under impossible pressure.

“When energy bills for small hotels resemble those of industrial facilities, when there is no cut in VAT rates for the sector, when recruitment rules don’t reflect the reality of rural workforces something is fundamentally out of sync with the real world.

What would you like to see done?

• A realistic VAT structure for hospitality – a lot to learn from some of our European neighbours or emerging power houses like India who have reduced the VAT to encourage growth.

• Long-term relief or reform on business rates.

• Practical solutions to staffing shortages, especially in rural areas

• Support for British farmers and producers facing the same inflationary pressures we are

• Incentives for training, apprenticeships and skills development,

• Encouragement for sustainable, regionally focused food systems.

“These are not radical ideas — they are common sense. They protect jobs, strengthen local supply chains and ensure that Britain’s hospitality sector, one of the most culturally and economically important industries we have, doesn’t collapse under its own weight.”

Who is Hrishikesh Desai?

Obviously, one of the UK’s outstanding creative chefs, now also overseeing a country house hotel, Farlam Hall, that is setting the bar higher and higher while retaining a dedication to homely hospitality rare among Relais & Chateaux establishments.

A key to his culinary is that Roux Scholarship award back in 2009. The most recent fruit was that educational expedition to Yucatán and Mexico City but the initial impetus from joining that elite culinary brotherhood was to launch him towards running his own kitchen.

He had been encouraged to enter by his then boss/mentor Hywel Jones at Lucknam Park. He had worked himself up from commis to head chef over a decade at this Michelin-starred exemplar outside Bath.

He had arrived there from France, itself quite some distance from his birthplace, Poona in Maharashtra. In his late teens he had won a scholarship to study restaurant management at the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon. It was in that most gastronomical of cities he found his true vocation – not fron of house but behind the stove.

He recalled: ’It sounds crazy to say but it all started with a crème brulée. ’I saw one being blowtorched and I was amazed by it. I think it was partly seeing that chefs got to use all of these cool gadgets but it also made me realise that if I wanted to fully understand this industry, I needed to cook. That was what made me want to become a chef.”

Fact file

Farlam Hall, Hallbankgate, Brampton, Cumbria, CA8 2NG. It is a 120 mile drive from Manchester via the M6 or there is a West Coast Mainline station at Carlisle, a 12 mile taxi drive away. Standard rooms start at £340 a night, deluxe at £465. Midweek rates are offered.

15 December 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Food, Restaurants, Travel

Pigeon ice cream oliebol? Welcome to the wizard van der Kroft’s magical lair

How entrancing are those still life paintings from the Dutch Golden Age – the pleasures of the table laid out in intimate detail. A modern day equivalent has just been set before us in a Rotterdam cellar. It looks an edible picture. Outside the pleasure craft are bobbing in the marina. This is the Kop van Zuid-Entrepot, part of the city’s waterfront redevelopment after World War Two devastation.

Inside the brick-vaulted Tres restaurant it feels like it could be any era. Yet the ingredients displayed in this preview of the 18 course tasting menu ahead of us are very much of the moment. Great mercantile city that it was, feeding off its far-eastern trade routes especially, it would have imported vanilla, soy sauce, caviar, truffles and spices. That they could all be produced in the Netherlands would have been unimaginable, but here they are today, explains front of house Emy KosterIt.

The brilliant wines in the pairing she has chosen, though, are not the product of the polders. Piemonte, Hungary, the Jura, Rioja host the vineyards and the winemakers. The Blanc de Noirs we are still sipping as we are escorted down from the amuse bouches upstairs is a low dosage growers Champagne. Hyper-localism can only go so far.

Less surprising will be the presence, across the autumn-specific menu, of rabbit, wild boar, roe deer, pigeon and duck. All sourced from as close to Rotterdam as possible. Nothing is from further away than 20 miles.

This devotion to seasonality and locale, alongside committed eco-responsibility, is expected of you when you hold a Michelin Green star and Emy’s life partner, chef patron Michael van der Kroft is so obviously worthy of his. Yes, the judging principles are less clear cut than in the standard Michelin star allocation and there are dissenters. One Substack scribe recently claimed Green stars were being quietly dropped, but this ‘fake news’ has been dismissed by the tyre folk.

In the UK three star establishments L’Enclume and Moor Hall additionally hold a Green Star. Manchester Food and Drink Awards restaurant of the year Where The Light Gets In just has a Green Star. Great company for Tres to be in – and it delivers. “Raw and pure, vintage and warm” was the verdict of those Michelin inspectors, but they were surely damning it with faint praise. A meal here is a remarkable experience that has won it 16 points in the Gaul Millau Guide. Note though, that each seasonal 18 course tasting menu costs 185 euros (alcoholic drinks pairing 110 euros, the inventing N/A 100 euros). You could do a lunchtime à la carte, but that doesn’t seem the point. Three to four hours perched along the 16-cover counter won’t drag.

We go all out with extra Champagne to kick off and two specials at a supplement. We feel obliged to load the ‘caviar course’ onto our truffle venison tartare. Royally obliged. Anna Dutch Caviar of Eindhoven is named after Anna Paulowna, Grand Duchess of Russia, who later became Queen of the Netherlands in the early 19th century. Granddaughter of Catherine the Great, who I’m sure was partial to a spot of beluga herself.

The second special is a signature dish dear to Michael that eventually turned up mid-meal (and yes we had an extra matching wine, too). It was a Dutch masterpiece – a pear poached two days in an egg broth, then aged, and served with a tomato ferment, pepper sauce and black garlic.

Where ferments including the house koji come to life, Michael’s lab is in the shadows at the back of the dining room next to the fridge where the duck prosciutto is curing. Another fridge has whole wild ducks stuffed with hay ready for the barbecue. Our breast from one will be served with a blackberry sauce and a blackcurrant wood oil riff on tahini. One of our snacks has been a duck ragu croquette with wild boar lardo and cherries on a bed of smoking pine and the most savoury of our desserts matches duck with fermented cherry in a soufflé. The exquisite petits fours will include duck fat waffles with chestnut. What an all-rounder the Dutch duck is.

Michael bases only one mouthful on the local pigeon but what a mouthful. Maybe it helps that it is served on an impala or some such skull (I meant to ask), but who could resist an oliebol (Dutch fried beignet) filled with pigeon ice cream – cool inside, warm outside like a profiterole? You down it in one like an Indian puri.

Just before the poached pear, that duck breast prosciutto arrives as a side to a dish that Michael wooed Emy with in their courtship and it has stayed on the menu during the six years of Tres’s existence. Essentially crisp kale and other greens in an intense ceps sauce. If only the Shokupan (delicate Japanese milk bread with morels) could have arrived earlier to mop up the juices.

It has been well chronicled that this chef came from a troubled family background, went off the rails as a teenager, turning to athletics and professional BMX as a refuge, before finding hid true metier as essentially a self-taught chef. His Eureka moment came when working in an Italian restaurant.

What has art got to do with it?

At this point let me state my aversion for detailing a tasting menu in chronological order. Given up on that. The Van der Kroft magic at times feels akin to freeform jazz and I’m happy to lift some solos willy-nilly. The whole experience left me craving a return visit to a season when fish is to the fore. Now that would make a still life.

One past reviewer reported “an umami-rich lobster flan, a strikingly realistic ‘octopus’ tentacle made out of vanilla cream and a caramel made from the fish fat that was separated in the lab.”

Hopefully my notes at table next time will extend beyond the likes of “Roe deer, vine leaf woodruff, walnut, vanilla”, for a gamey highlight even surpassing “Rabbit loin belly, ceps cream sauce, Van Gogh!”

Yes, that fellow Dutch master gets a look-in as a savoury canvas with bunny loaf partnering a roulade of rabbit. A pudding of Dutch vanilla praline is less cornfields more some bizarre objet from Magritte. Belgian, of course, but I feel his imagination would have felt at home on this Rotterdam quayside.

Tres, Vijf Werelddelen 75, 3071 PS Rotterdam, Netherlands. 16 points Gault MIllau.

Well, who would have thought the Dutch could offer such produce?

One of the curiosities of Michael van der Kroft’s cuisine is his refusal to use salt. Ditto no chocolate. Only one of the dishes on our tasting menu featured salt – and that was a pudding. But what sea salt it is. Zeeuwsche Zoute originates from the fishing village of Bruinisse situated next to the largest national park in the Netherlands, the Oosterschelde. Oyster and mussel beds purify the saltwater, which is finely filtered to remove as many microplastics as possible before the salt is extracted.

Salt is the only preservative in Anna Dutch Caviar, produced at an innovative sturgeon farm near Eindhoven. 90 per cent of the sturgeon is from the species Acipenser gueldenstaedtii, aiming to recreate the taste of Caspian style osetra caviar. My own preference is for beluga, but we loved our Tres o setraoverload.

I was less surprised to discover truffles are found in the Netherlands; astonished, though, about the country’s own Koppert Cress Architecture Aromatique vanilla and Tomasu Rotterdam Soy Sauce.

The Tomasu producers bank everything on the nutrient-rich, healthy soil in which they grow their sesame seeds, rice, peppers, and sweet sorghum. Mantra? “We don’t grow for quantity; we grow for quality. And therefore, seed selection plays a significant role. In parallel, we can play and experiment with new and old varieties of seeds.”

They brew their soy the traditional way, using soybeans, wheat, salt, and water. Then it is fermented and aged for a minimum of 24 months in former American white oak whisky barrels.

4 November 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Drink, Food, Restaurants

Unveiled: the fantastic 2025 MFDF Awards shortlist – cast your votes now

The 2025 Manchester Food and Drink Festival Awards shortlist has been announced, and Therme Manchester, the UK’s first urban wellbeing resort under construction in TraffordCity, has been confirmed as the headline sponsor.

The winners will be revealed at the MFDF Awards Dinner at New Century Hall on Monday, January 26 and the region’s food and drink fans are invited to vote for the winners now via the MFDF website.

These are the most prestigious and longest standing awards in the North West and celebrate the region’s exceptional hospitality industry, with 128 nominees this year across 16 categories.

This year Therme Manchester is headline sponsor – a transformational large-scale wellbeing destination (imaged above) which will feature pools, saunas, waterslides, and wellbeing therapies set to complete construction in late 2028 and welcome 1.7 million guests in its first year. It promises a groundbreaking approach to nutrition, hydration, food sustainability and support for local producers,

MFDF Awards Director Alexa Stratton-Powell told me: “As we welcome Therme Manchester as a partner it’s an opportunity to celebrate the next chapter for our world-class city region and champion the talent and communities that make it extra special. This year’s list of nominees is a phenomenal example of this innovation with talent from all quarters of Greater Manchester to celebrate -from takeaways in Trafford to Michelin star meals in Ancoats.”

It does look an exceptional list. Here it is in full:

AFFORDABLE EATS VENUE OF THE YEAR (sponsored by Therme)

Noodle Alley

56A Faulkner Street, Manchester, M1 4FH

Pho Cue

52A Faulkner Street, Manchester, M1 4FH

Cafe Sanjuan

27 St Petersgate, Manchester, SK1 1EB

Hong Thai

140 Oldham Road, Ancoats, Manchester, M4 6BG

Seoul Kimchi

275 Upper Brooke Street, Manchester, M13 0HR

Double Zero

368 Barlow Moor Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, M21 8AZ

Wow Báhn Mì

132 Oldham Road, Ancoats, Manchester M4 6BG

Rabbie’s Thai

Civic Centre, Wythenshawe Manchester, M22 5RQ

Last year’s winner: Nell’s Pizza, Manchester

TAKEAWAY OF THE YEAR

Ceresis

166, Northenden Road, Manchester, Sale, M33 3HE

Ad Maiora

84 Tib Street, Manchester M4 1LG

Home Chinese

16 Chorlton Street, Manchester M1 3HW

Viet Deli

22 Blackfriars Street, Manchester, M3 5BQ

Pancho’s Burritos

Arndale Food Market, 49 High Street, Manchester, M4 3AH

Rack

Arndale Food Market, 49 High Street, Manchester, M4 3AH

Mughli Charcoal Pit

30 Wilmslow Road, Manchester, M14 5TQ

This & That

3 Soap Street, Manchester M4 1EW

Last year’s winner: Fat Pat’s, Manchester

CAFE OR COFFEE SHOP OF THE YEAR (new for 2025)

Cafe Sanjuan

27 St Petersgate, Manchester, SK1 1EB

Oscillate Coffee

52 Flixton Road, Urmston, M41 5AB

Federal Cafe Bar

194 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 3ND

Just Between Friends Coffee

56 Tib Street, Manchester, M4 1LG

Sipp Coffee

105 Beech Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, M21 9EQ

à bloc

38 Stamford Park Road, Altrincham, WA15 9EW

The Old Fire Station Bakery

47 Albion Place, Crescent, Salford M5 4NL

Something More Productive

9 Egerton Crescent, Withington, M20 4PN

WINE OFFERING OF THE YEAR (new for 2025)

Ad Hoc

28 Edge Street, Manchester, M4 1HN

Higher Ground

Faulkner House, New York Street, Manchester M1 4DY

The Beeswing

KAMPUS, 24a Minshull Street, Manchester, M1 3EF

Salut Wines

11 Cooper Street, Manchester, M2 2FW

Reserve Wines

1 Eagle Street, Manchester, M4 5BU

Flawd Wine

9 Keepers Quay, Manchester, M4 6GL

Where the Light Gets In

7 Rostron Brow, Stockport, SK1 1JY

Kerb

49 Henry Street, Manchester, M4 5DH

FOOD TRADER OF THE YEAR

The Little Sri Lankan

House of Habesha

Kargo MKT, Salford M50 3AG

Baity

Kargo MKT, Salford M50 3AG

Rita’s Reign

Piccadilly Street Food Market, Piccadilly, Manchester, M1 1LY

Rack

Arndale Food Market, 49 High Street, Manchester, M4 3AH

Taiko Ramen

1 Eagle Street, Manchester, M4 5BU

Thatziki

Kargo MKT, Salford M50 3AG

Little Scarfs

17A Lower Hillgate, Stockport, SK1 1JQ

Last year’s winner: Honest Crust, Manchester

FOODIE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE YEAR

Stockport

Urmston

Levenshulme

Chorlton

Monton

Salford

Altrincham

Sale

Last year’s winner: Prestwich

INDEPENDENT DRINK PRODUCER OF THE YEAR

Balance Brewing & Blending

Unit 10, Sheffield Street, Manchester, M1 2DN

Pod Pea Vodka

Ten Locks, Fairhill Road, Irlam, Manchester, M44 6BD

Stiff Tea Brewing Company

3 Hoyle Street, Manchester, M12 6HG

Sureshot Brewing

5 Sheffield Street, Manchester, M1 2DN

Runaway Brewery

9-11 Astley Street, Stockport, SK4 1AW

Track Brewing Co

Unit 18, Piccadilly Trading Estate, Manchester, M1 2NP

Seven Bro7hers

Unit 63, Waybridge Enterprise Centre, Daniel Adamson Road, Salford, Greater Manchester, M50 1DS

Weekend Project Brewing Co

Hulme Lane, Lower Peover, Knutsford, WA16 9QH

Last year’s winner: Cloudwater BrewCo, Manchester

INDEPENDENT FOOD PRODUCER OF THE YEAR

Long Boi’s Bakehouse

40 Forest Range, Manchester, M19 2HP

Holy Grain Sourdough

253 Deansgate, Great Northern Mews, Manchester M3 4EN

Littlewoods Butchers

5 School Lane, Heaton Chapel, Stockport, SK4 5DE

Lily’s Vegetarian Indian Cuisine

85 Oldham Road, Ashton-under-Lyne, OL6 7DF

Wong Wong Bakery

32 Princess Street, Manchester M1 4LB

Pollen Bakery

Cotton Field Wharf,, Manchester M4 6FQ

Half Dozen Other

Unit 17 Redbank, Cheetham Hill, Manchester, M4 4HF

Mayya Bakery

32-34, Duncan Street, Salford, M5 3SQ

Last year’s winner: Great North Pie Co, Wilmslow

NEIGHBOURHOOD VENUE OF THE YEAR

Fold Bistro & Bottle Shop

7 Town Street, Marple Bridge, SK6 5AA

Stretford Canteen

118 Chester Road, Stretford M32 9BH

The Pearl

425 Bury New Road, Prestwich, M25 1AF

Lupo

Mountheath Trading Estate, Unit 65 Ardent Way, Manchester, M25 9WE

Cantaloupe

71 Great Underbank, Stockport, SK1 1PE

Tawny Stores

1 Upper Hibbert Lane, Marple, SK6 7JQ

The Perfect Match

103 Cross Street, Sale, M33 7JN

Gladstone Barber and Bistro

Unit 3 Pattern House, Castle Street, Stalybridge, SK15 1NX

Last year’s winner: Bar San Juan, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

PUB OR BEER BAR OF THE YEAR

Victoria Tap

Victoria Station Approach, Manchester, M3 1WY

Runaway Brewery

9-11 Astley Street, Stockport, SK4 1AW

City Arms

46-48, Kennedy Street, Manchester M2 4BQ

The Marble Arch Inn

73 Rochdale Road, Manchester, M4 4HY

The Magnet Freehouse

51 Wellington Road North, Stockport SK4 1HJ

Café Beermoth

Brown Street, Manchester, M2 1DA

North Westward Ho

19 Chapel Walks, Manchester, M2 1HN

Track Taproom

Unit 18, Piccadilly Trading Estate, Manchester, M1 2NP

Last year’s winner: Mulligans, Manchester

GREAT SERVICE AWARD

Tast Catala

20-22 King Street, Manchester, M2 6AG

Atomeca

1B, Deansgate Square, Owen Street, Manchester, M15 4YB

Higher Ground

Faulkner House, New York Street, Manchester M1 4DY

Adam Reid at The French

16 Peter Street, Manchester M60 2DS

Maray

14 Brazennose Street, Manchester, M2 6LW

Federal Cafe Bar

194 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 3ND

Blacklock Manchester

37 Peter Street, Manchester M2 5GB

Kallos Cafe & Wine Bar

3 Bankside Boulevard, Salford, M3 7HD

Last. year’s winner: Schofield’s Bar, Manchester

LOW OR NO OFFERING OF THE YEAR (new for 2025)

Nell’s Pizza

22 Minshull Street, Kampus, Manchester M1 3EF

Cloudwater Brew Co

7-8 Piccadilly Trading Estate, Manchester, M1 2NP

Dishoom

32 Bridge Street, Manchester, M3 3BT

Red Light

4-2 Little David Street, Manchester, M1 3GL

Blinker Bar

64 -72 Spring Gardens, Manchester, M2 2BQ

Hinterland

16-20 Turner Street, Manchester, M4 1DZ

Lina Stores

17 Quay Street, Manchester, M3 3HN

Speak in Code

7 Jackson’s Row, Manchester, M2 5ND

BAR OF THE YEAR

Stray

1 Eagle Street, Manchester, M4 5BU

Schofield’s Bar

Sunlight House, 3 Little Quay Street, Manchester, M3 3JZ

Red Light

4-2 Little David Street, Manchester, M1 3GL

Speak in Code

7 Jackson’s Row, Manchester, M2 5ND

Pray Tell

Unit 6 Stanley Square, Sale, M33 7XZ

Renae

45-47 Thomas Street, Manchester, M4 1NA

Libero

2A Kings Court, Railway Street, Altrincham, WA14 2RE

Flawd Wine

9 Keepers Quay, Manchester, M4 6GL

Last year’s winner: Hawksmoor, Manchester

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR

Cantaloupe

71 Great Underbank, Stockport, SK1 1PE

Bangkok Diners Club

17 Blossom Street, Ancoats, M4 5BR

Stow

62 Bridge Street, Manchester, M3 3BW

Kallos Cafe & Wine Bar

3 Bankside Boulevard, Salford, M3 7HD

Café Continental

5 Melbourne Street, Stalybridge, SK15 2JE

Winsome

74 Princess Street, Manchester, M1 6JD

Royal Nawaab Pyramid

The Pyramid Kings Valley, Stockport, SK4 2JU

Kung Fu Noodle

48A George Street, Manchester, M1 4HF

Last year’s winner: Skof, Manchester

CHEF OF THE YEAR

Rosie Maguire (Higher Ground)

Shaun Moffat (Winsome)

Adam Reid (Adam Reid at The French)

Matt Bennett (The Pearl)

Mary-Ellen McTague (Pip)

Patrick Withington (Erst)

Jamie Pickles (Stow)

Jack Fields (Restaurant Orme)

Last Year’s winner: Tom Barnes (Skof)

RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR

mana

42 Blossom Street, Ancoats, Manchester, M4 6BF

Skof

3 Federation Street, Manchester, M4 4BF

Adam Reid At The French

16 Peter Street, Manchester M60 2DS

Winsome

74 Princess Street, Manchester, M1 6JD

Higher Ground

Faulkner House, New York Street, Manchester M1 4DY

Stow

62 Bridge Street, Manchester, M3 3BW

Erst

9 Murray Street, Ancoats, Manchester, M4 6HS

Cantaloupe

71 Great Underbank, Stockport, SK1 1PE

Last year’s winner: Where The Light Gets In, Stockport

*The shortlist reflects the incredible culinary diversity of Greater Manchester*

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

The shortlisted nominations have been compiled by the MFDF Judging Panel, taking into account award submissions from the hospitality industry. The panel is made up of the region’s leading food and drink critics, writers, and experts. The awards are now open to public vote on the MFDF website.

As well as the public vote, a mystery shopping period will now commence where judges will visit nominated venues in some categories or an anonymous dining visit and will score venues based on their experiences.

The mystery shopping and public voting period will end at midnight on January 12, 2026 when the polls will be counted and combined with the judges’ scores and the winner of each category will be chosen.

The MFDF 25 Award Winners will be announced at the MFDF Awards Dinner on Monday 26th January and tickets can be purchased by emailing isabella@foodanddrinkfestival.com.

31 October 2025/by Neil Sowerby

Cocochine – hospitable luxury with an astonishing attention to detail

Regenerative farming in Northants, special seafood from the Hebrides

What of the food?

The Simple Philosophy of The Cocochine

How Ripponden got ‘padronised’ by El Gato’s arrival

Mark Kemp on the Shaw fire that ignited the El Gato legend

Looking forward now to El Gato’s third decade

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

My sugar rush along the streets of Girona

Origins of the Botifarra Dolça and what to do with it?

So what exactly is Lonely Planet celebrating?

A quest for the wholly Crail

Ancient Cellardyke and newbie Anstruther

Pittenweem is a quirky delight

Salt of the earth on the way to St Monans

Elie – here life really is a beach

Where to have our Christmas feast if the dream comes true

Nothing but shin beef will do – discuss

Brunelleschi and a Duomo built on peppery beef stew

Peposo the Brutto way

Fact file

What has art got to do with it?

Well, who would have thought the Dutch could offer such produce?

AFFORDABLE EATS VENUE OF THE YEAR (sponsored by Therme)

TAKEAWAY OF THE YEAR

CAFE OR COFFEE SHOP OF THE YEAR (new for 2025)

WINE OFFERING OF THE YEAR (new for 2025)

FOOD TRADER OF THE YEAR

FOODIE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE YEAR

INDEPENDENT DRINK PRODUCER OF THE YEAR

INDEPENDENT FOOD PRODUCER OF THE YEAR

NEIGHBOURHOOD VENUE OF THE YEAR

PUB OR BEER BAR OF THE YEAR

GREAT SERVICE AWARD

LOW OR NO OFFERING OF THE YEAR (new for 2025)

BAR OF THE YEAR

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR

CHEF OF THE YEAR

RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

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