Northwest Food News – March 2014

In the month that sees the start of spring (20 Mar if you’re interested in these things), Food News wouldn’t really be complete without a spot of rebirth. Liverpool’s Everyman Bistro has been closed for just less than three ears, while its home, the Everyman Theatre, was rased to make way for a bigger, badder incarnation. The bistro earned a fantastic reputation, thanks in part to chef Tom Gill, who went on to work at well-respected The Brink, and many of the original team are on board for its relaunch. In addition, there will be a new street cafe overlooking Hope Street. www.everymanplayhouse.com 

Another addition to Liverpool’s fine-dining scene this spring comes in the shape of Paul Askew’s The Art School. With his new restaurant, the chef director of London Carriage Works and the Hope Street Hotel has expressed an intent to fill the Michelin-star void. Sugnall Street, @ArtSchoolLpool

Writer Steven Poole knocked them, the Independent discussed their emergence way back in 2011, and now Manchester will at last have its very own ‘food rave’. Unlike actual raves, however, it’s not an endless cycle of hypnotic monotony, fuelled by drugs. Unless you class hot dogs and pizzas as drugs, in which case... Friday Food Fight by B.eat Street aims to unite eating, drinking and clubbing (what’s not to like?). They’re mashing it up, slickly fading restaurants (Ning, SoLIta, Yang Sing...) into street-food heroes/startups (Honest Crust, Hip Hop Chip Shop, Arepa!Arepa!Arepa!...) to a backdrop of the city’s best club stalwarts, including The Warehouse Project’s Krysko and Jonny Dub. (You might even see your one-and-only Food and Drink ed there, getting stuck in). Every Friday from 7 Mar at Upper Campfield Market, @beatstreetmcr

To many, Indian food and fine dining are mutually exclusive. Curry and all its accompaniments should be a hands-on affair, unsuited to ostentatious presentation and all the better for the rusticity and pooling oil. But it’s an opinion worth challenging. Mughli, who are no strangers to these pages, have got together with chef Ernst Van Zyl of Macclesfield’s The Lord Clyde, who is well known for being a dedicated food porn provider on Twitter, to form... Mughli&Clyde. We know: it sounds like a long-lost, ill thought-out Robert Louis Stevenson novel, but it’s actually a modernist take on Mughlai cuisine, seven-course tasting menu and all. While the tickets may very well have sold out by the time you read this, it's an important culinary and collaborative milestone in the city. @mughli @the_lordclyde

Before we forget: while Valentine’s Day – with its fuzzy, lovey-dovey outside and scary, capitalist machine inside – was vetoed, Mother’s Day actually seems an appropriate holiday to include in this here Food News. If you’re great at thinking up gifts and activities, congrats and look away! If not, here are precisely three ideas:

Liverpool’s Camp & Furnace are doing a special version of their Roast events on 10 Mar (for that “It’s just so nice when someone else cooks it” feeling); there's a Cider Festival in a bleedin’ crypt at Liverpool’s Saint Antony’s between 28-29 Mar (the alcohol will, we hope, stave off thoughts of the grave, though it could do the opposite), and for mums addicted to chocohol, there’s a Chocolate Heaven course at Cheshire Cookery School with chocolatier Oliver Dunn (www.thecheshirecookeryschool.com). In essence, make sure your mam has a nice day, capiche?