For Food Fans

The Manchester Food and Drink Festival is winding down – which means there will be no more food and drink until the next one. Not really, but kind-of. It aims to promote local restaurateurs and producers of ‘real food’, which is great except that it’s a bit of a tease. When the marquees come down the restaurants will still be there but the produce won’t. You may get to taste the best goat’s cheese ever but you won’t find it in the shops later. The chains of mini supermarkets that monopolise the city centre represent the antithesis of the Festival’s ethos and their uniform stock of convenience foods - ready meals, sandwiches, pseudo-bakery and bottles of industrially produced drinks – is, despite multiplicity and apparent diversity, uniformly bland. Whether they are catering to their customers’ needs or serving Mammon is a moot point but I once saw some token onions in a Spar shop which had waited so long for a customer that they had grown shoots.

The food and drink distribution system is designed to deliver bar-coded packages to outlets with fast turnover such as these and until the ‘real food’ producers get in on the act they are destined to sell their goods in specialist shops (which don’t exist) or farmers’ markets (which do exist but only on the third Sunday of some months and most likely when you are away for the weekend). And so the good stuff is only available, like Christmas markets, once a year. When the banners come down it’s back to industrialised food and drink again.

Before it was dismantled I made a point of heading for the cider tent where 25 varieties were on offer – a rarity in these parts. I was keen to indulge my taste for something very dry and still but the young man who had been left in charge (it was a quiet time of day) admitted that he knew nothing about cider: he was a flavoured vodka aficionado. He was, however, very generous with his employer’s stock offering me so many free samples that, by the time I was satisfied, I had forgiven his ignorance and had almost come to like him.

A few days later I was in the vicinity of Ludlow in Shropshire for some recreational walking along sections of Offa’s Dyke, the remains of an earth embankment which runs the entire length of the attractive borderlands between Wales and England. Considering the scale of this work there is very little documented history, although it was probably built sometime in the 8^th Century by order of the Welsh King Offa as a boundary marker and/or defensive fortification against the acquisitive English. Walking the Dyke is enjoyable if you care for the countryside and the history which has formed it over the centuries.

There is also the advantage of being close to Ludlow which is remarkably interesting for a small market town on the way to nowhere in particular. It has many attractions: there is an impressive castle, quaint streets, historic buildings and friendly natives but these are mere sideshows to the main draw - it has more real food purveyors in its high street than exist in the whole of Greater Manchester. There are traditional butchers’ shops with rabbits and game hanging outside; a fishmonger’s where you can also sit and eat shellfish with Sancerre; delicatessens stuffed with local and exotic foods; a cavernous fruit and vegetable hall; a busy street-market and lots of cosy pubs overflowing with craft beers and ciders.

Ludlow is a permanent food festival, a theme park for foodies and, wonder of wonders, a farmers’ market which keeps regular hours!  And you don’t have to breach the Dyke to get there: it’s on the English side.