If you’re anything like me, you’ll always be on the look out for new ways to waste time online and avoid that essay due in a day or so. Let me introduce you to the endlessly addictive world of food blogging. The internet is full of these, so you can plan your hypothetical trip to L’Enclume (equal best restaurant in the country with Heston’s Fat Duck and only a few hours away in Cumbria).
A good introduction to it all is through Manchester Confidential’s food and drink section or Urbanspoon, and once you get going I recommend these ones:
Hungry Hoss – http://www.hungryhoss.com/
One of the oldest and best, written by a Manchester-based primary school teacher with reviews of everything from the Fat Duck (Blumenthal) to Jamie’s Italian. What really comes through is his love of food, and he is very funny too.
Northern Food – http://m62food.blogspot.co.uk/
As well as his year long search for the perfect bacon sandwich (it has a spreadsheet and everything), this blog gives you a great insight into the restaurants of Sheffield and Leeds as well as Manchester, with a few hearty traditional northern recipes thrown in too.
North West Nosh – http://northwestnosh.blogspot.co.uk/
Perfectly happy to slate a restaurant even if they’re giving her a freebie (always the most fun to read), there is also a focus on good places to drink in this blog, and she is big on recommending interesting local produce.
All You Can Eat – http://simonbinns.blogspot.co.uk/
Given his day job as a journalist, this blogger gets good insider knowledge and hot tips about new openings, and it has a good mix of highbrow and lowbrow.
Flavours of Manchester – http://flavoursofmanchester.blogspot.co.uk/
An unbelievably comprehensive coverage of pretty much every curry cafe, kebab shop and pub in Manchester. A must read if you want to find a half-decent curry in Rusholme, a dirt cheap and actually tasty kebab or want to plan a pub crawl somewhere that isn’t populated entirely by students.
