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Porridge is a great winter breakfast, I love to pimp it up with fruit and nuts. My favourites are blueberries & maple syrup and banana, toasted almond & poppy seeds but at Christmas I like it a little more festive so came up with this Festive Cranberry Porridge recipe. You can make your porridge however you usually do and just …

I’m a massive Mojito lover, they’re my favourite ever cocktail but they’re a bit too summery to be drinking at Christmas so last year I was determined to come up with a perfect Christmassy Mojito. I played around with all sorts of combinations to give my mojito a festive kick including adding cloves, cinnamon, clementines etc.. but most of them …

I love Christmas, especially exciting festive foods. Cranberries are one of my favourites, they just look and tastes like Christmas and go well with all sorts of sweet and savoury dishes. This cranberry syrup is gorgeous, it’s sweet but with a bit of sharpness left and amazing flavour. It’s red colour is brilliant and it’s really versatile, it can be …

The third of my 4 planned festive dining trips this year (after Solita & Miracle On High Street) was at one of my favourite local restaurants Aumbry. This was my 4th time eating at Aumbry (although admittedly the last was a charity Gruffalo lunch) and it’s fair to say that I love the place. The food is seriously high end, head …

Miracle On High Street is a popup restaurant & bar from the people behind Almost Famous Burgers. On their website they say “We’re unashamedly celebrating all things festive – join us for eats, drinks, and being merry.” and they’re not joking! The magical feeling begins before you even even arrive as you first have to find a Narnia like stair …

I love Christmas but for some reason so far this year I’m not feeling very festive yet. It will definitely come but to help hurry that festive feeling along I decided to sample the new Christmas menu items at one of my favourite Manchester restaurants, Solita. Solita are well known for their burgers, they taste great thanks to being cooked …

After drinking a little too much wine at The Fat Duck the previous night I wondered if I was really up to a big lunch. I decided it would be crazy to leave Bray without eating at Heston’s Michelin starred pub The Hinds Head so went along anyway and i’m so glad that I did. I’d already had a couple of drinks …

Three months ago I finally got a reservation for Heston Blumenthal’s 3 Michelin star restaurant ‘The Fat Duck’. A whole 6 years after first deciding to go. Now, it is a very hard place to get a reservation but I can’t claim that’s the reason it took so long, it’s a very long story involving fussy friends, redundancy and child birth …

The Hand & Flowers opened in 2005 and received it’s first Michelin star in under a year, in the 2012 Guide it was awarded it’s second becoming the only ‘pub’ in the world to hold 2 Michelin stars. During that time Tom Kerridge has competed in 2 series of ‘Great British Menu’ winning the main course round both times and …

I have a huge list of restaurants I’d like to visit, one that was on the list for a while was ‘Red’ in Westhoughton. I was annoyed when it shut down before I’d had chance to pay them a visit as I’d heard good things about them and they won Lancashire Life’s ‘Best Restaurant of the Year’ within a year …

A restaurant that only serves pancakes? I love pancakes (who doesn’t?) so I was obviously excited by this prospect. Pancake Corner is a bit out of the way down a back street in Urmston but there is a popup coming to Manchester’s Spinningfields soon. It was completely empty when we arrived and it actually looked closed, luckily it wasn’t. Inside …

Most of my early dining out experiences were in Italian restaurants, whilst I love having access to so many other cuisines these days there will always be a little piece of me in love with Italian restaurants. There are already countless Italians in Manchester, though most of them seem to be soulless chains serving the same old mediocre food. With …

I receive quite a few offers of promotional items and other PR opportunities, I turn most of them down because I don’t feel that they’re beneficial to the site or you the readers. However, I was recently contacted by the supermarket Booths and invited to be a VIP guest of their weekly #BoothsCheers Twitter and Instagram parties. I must confess that I …

I wouldn’t normally write another review of a restaurant when revisiting so soon after the original review. However Solita is no normal restaurant so exceptions must be made! (Don’t worry, i’ll explain what I mean by this at the end.) Last week my young son was sent home from school with an ear infection, he’s as mad about food as …

Later this month I’m finally dining at The Fat Duck, over 6 years since I was supposed to (long stroy). Reservations are required to be made 3 calendar months in advance so mine was made in August which feels like forever ago and I’d almost forgotten about it (not really)! A couple of days ago I received a surprise email …