Flavours of Manchester – A Taste of Two Cities
Carmel Smickersgill, Tours & Activities Editor
Flavours of Manchester are a new and innovative name on the food and drink tour scene. They offer bespoke themed walking tours, spotlighting certain areas of both Manchester and Salford’s culinary landscape. Join them for an alternative view into two cities, through your tastebuds, curiosity and feet.
Often referred to as the other, the second, the one over the river, Salford is rapidly becoming a hive of cultural experience. Discover this for yourself with the Taste of Two Cities tour, where you’ll venture through both Salford and Manchester exploring what edible links can be terraced across the river.
Alongside the taste of two cities tour, Flavours of Manchester offer three other foodie experiences. Starting with one of the pivotal moments in Manchester’s history, the industrial revolution. Familiarly known as Cottonopolis, the cotton trade fuelled a powerful time of change in the city which can be traced through what people were eating and the foodie movements that started through it as much as its financial and social legacy.
The Innovation, Inspiration and Intellect tour combines some of the more cutting edge sides of Manchester’s restaurant scene with pioneering thinkers, provocateurs and intellectuals who’ve left a mark on the city.
Veganism and vegetarianism is at an all-time high, but it often goes unmentioned that the British vegetarian movement started in Manchester. The city has a rich history of choosing to abstain from consuming animals and you can enjoy the creative, mouth-watering, inventions that the seed of an ideology has led to. Check out the Green Quarter tour, for a plant-based culinary journey which will leave you wondering why we bother with meat at all, when everything else tastes so good.
All the Flavours of Manchester tours last around 3.5 to 4 hours and feature 5 food dishes as well as two alcoholic beverages (non-alcoholic options are available). With this in mind, arrive hungry and ready to learn a bit about Manchester and Salford’s history as well as the origins of the dishes you try. You can go to either a lunchtime or evening session of the tours. All ages are welcome and under 18’s can attend at a discounted price. The guides adopt an attitude of touring whatever the weather, so be prepared for Manchester’s typical climate.
