Two for One Cocktails at The Pitcher & Piano, Didsbury

To be fair, The Pitcher & Piano is not necessarily the first place you'd think to visit during a credit crunch. Many a time has my husband looked balefully at the moths escaping from his wallet as he is informed that, yes, that round of a couple of beers and a bottle of wine really does come to 25 quid. However, one thing the P & P does do well is weekday offers - the current deal is two cocktails for the price of one all evening from Sunday to Thursday. The cocktail list is pretty exciting, and as most cost around £5.50 it makes it eminently justifiable to have a couple under the 2-for-1 promotion....

Bridgewater Hall Christmas Concerts 2008

Hurrah - it's nearly that time of year again, when you can throw aside good taste and all feelings of cynicism for a few hours and sing along with Christmas songs played by an orchestra wearing furry reindeer antlers. Yes - it's Christmas Concert time at the usually genteel and refined Bridgewater Hall.

The first one to get excited about is White Christmas on Saturday 13th December, a concert promising a whole range of cheesy favourites such as Santa Baby and All I Want for Christmas is You (you KNOW you want the chance to sing along with these); the second highlight is the more traditional Christmas Gala on Wednesday 17th December, which this year is presented by Angela Rippon (one can only hope she throws in a few high kicks). Full details are available at the Bridgewater Hall website.

Anyone feeling reticent about entering into the spirit of these joyous evenings is best advised to visit the Christmas Market first and consume a large amount of mulled wine. Otherwise, stay at home and Bah Humbug to you.

Didsbury Beer Festival Nov 21st - 22nd 2008

At last! Not only is Didsbury having its very own beer festival, but the organisers have very kindly selected a venue a mere stone's throw from my house (as I write I am ignoring sound of husband pacing up and down awaiting start of festival). The event will run over two days - Fri 21st and Sat 22nd Nov - at St Catherine's Social Club on School Lane (LOVE the idea that St Catherine may be nodding in approval at all this) and has been generously sponsored by local businesses who have stumped up £100 each to become stakeholders in the festival.

If you are one of those fortunate souls who knocks off early on a Friday, the doors open at 6pm and will stay that way until you are forcibly ejected at 11pm, all for a measly £4. Hardened drinkers who can cope with beer during the day can partake of the festival between 12pm and 5pm on Saturday (£2), and the rest of us can go between 6pm and 11pm (£3). A limited range of food will be available to soak up all that beer (the organisers have sensibly gone for hotpot), and you can drink to musical accompaniment from Swingin' Affair, an Irish Pipe band, or the Cheesy Weasels depending on what day you go.

All the beers on offer will be local (furthest flung being from the Lake District) and there will also be a selection of ciders available: for a full list, visit the festival website.

Yang Sing is Britain's Best Chinese Restaurant

Congratulations to Manchester's Yang Sing, which has been declared the best Chinese restaurant in Britain at the Tsingtao Legacy of Taste competition. They beat off five other finalists, each representing a different region of the UK and originally selected through a public vote (does anybody remember this? I would have voted for Lotus takeaway if anyone had asked me my opinion).

The award is a presigious one, but may come as a surprise to Manchester residents as the increasingly widely held opinion locally seems to be that the Yang Sing is not quite as good as it used to be. Still, look out for the tourists posing for a photograph alongside the rickshaws that seem to be permanently cluttering the pavement outside the restaurant.

Restaurant Review: Azzurro, West Didsbury

Manchester is very well served for pretty much any type of restaurant you care to mention: Indian, Chinese, French, Turkish, Japanese, even English. The one thing lacking, to my mind, is traditional Italian, by which I mean poky little local places where the tablecloths are made from plastic printed with red gingham, and candles are stuck in fat-bottomed Chianti bottles wearing little grass skirts. The sort of place where you can get drunk on slightly rough red wine of dubious provenance, and eat an enormous calzone pizza for about six quid. If you know of any such place, please let me know immediately.

Meanwhile, I have had to make do with an altogether classier place: Azzurro, on Burton Road in West Didsbury. This is a clean, bright restaurant (no dingy corners here), with neat wooden tables and a simple menu, and a charming owner by the name of Emil. Continuing evidence that people are simply ignoring the credit crunch is that the place was full on a Thursday evening, so that poor Emil had little chance to chat, which he will do quite happily on a quiet night.

The pick of the starters are the mozzarella al forno - a huge ball of cheese wrapped in parma ham - and the chicken liver crostini - smooth pate served with hefty wedges of toast. There are always a couple of fresh fish specials on the blackboard - last night they were mussels in a tomato and garlic sauce, or grilled sardines. For mains, a range of pasta dishes is available: I would suggest the seafood linguine if you are fishy-minded, or if you are staunchly carnivorous then you can choose from several meat options including steak, chicken and wild boar stew.

None of this comes particularly cheap, with starters between £5 and £6, and main courses from around £14 and upwards. However, if you sign up to their mailing list you will receive special offers via e-mail, and can eat your meal smug in the knowledge that you are paying less for it than other, less-special customers!

• Azzurro is at 242 Burton Rd, West Didsbury, Manchester M20 2LW, tel. 0161 4480099, www.azzurrorestaurant.com
  

Christmas at Tatton Park

If you are starting to feel unashamedly festive, becoming misty-eyed at the thought of twinkly lights and pineneedles stuck in the carpet, then console yourself with the idea of a trip to Tatton Park. As usual, the mansion will be decorated in traditional style (think the gingham-inspired covers of home & garden magazines round about this time of year) and if you can block the crowds out, you can pretty much swan about pretending that it's all yours.

The best time to visit is on one of the "Tatton by Candlelight" evenings, when you can suspend your cynicism for the night and wander through all the Staterooms lit by candles (the rooms, not you), accompanied by live music from choirs, musicians and - yes, really - bell ringers. Your ticket also allows entry to a traditional Gift Fair, and all the shops are open late to allow the buying of overpriced but charming tat for Aunty and Grandma.

The evenings run from 6.30 - 9pm (last entry 8.30) on Wed 3rd Dec to Fri 5th Dec, and Sat 6th Dec from 5.30 - 8pm (brilliant! home in time for x-factor!). Adult tickets cost £6.50, with children's tickets at £3.50. For more details and to book, call Tatton Park on 01625 374400.

The North Pole comes to Manchester

More festive news, this time alcohol-related (bravo!). A new bar has sprung up next to Urbis in central Manchester, and is described as the city's first "pop-up" bar and restaurant - in other words, it's in a marquee, and it's temporary. The bar has a capacity of 300, and will serve suitably wintery cocktails (mulled wine, anyone?) as well as a comfort food-laden menu specially created by top chef Robert Owen Brown. The food is great value, with stews costing just £4.95, and you can choose from the following rather mouth-watering options:

• chicken with slow-roasted tomatoes
• bacon and wild mushroom
• garlic and rosemary spiked mutton with jerusalem artichoke
• slow braised beef with caramelised onions and Guinness (this one gets my vote)
• creamy chicken, tarragon and leek
• vension with claret and juniper

A vegetarian option - winter vegetables and barley with Cheshire cheese dumplings - is available at £3.95.

The bar is open until New Year's Eve.

Manchester Christmas Lights Switch-On

Yes, I know it's only the beginning of November, but the Christmas lights in central Manchester are being switched on this Friday, the 7th November. And which glittering stars have we secured to turn the lights on? Erm... Ditchy and Salty from Century Radio (even their names scream "local radio") and X-Factor winner Leon Jackson, whose current single charted lower than a spoof song by a man from Bolton wearing a ginger wig.

Also present will be Alesha Dixon, performing that new song about a boy not washing up, which sounds suspiciously like the Lou Bega song that Channel 4 used to have as the music to the cricket highlights. Traditionalists will be pleased to know that Father Christmas and Frosty the Snowman will also be appearing.

All this jollity will take place in Albert Square between 6.30 and 7.30, and is free.

Bonfire Night 2008 at Platt Fields, Manchester

This Wednesday is Bonfire Night, hot on the heels of Halloween as the second of the two nights per year you definitely don't want to spend at home. Admittedly, on Bonfire Night you won't get your house egged by hooligans just because you pretended you weren't in, but it would still seem preferable to wrap up and brave the cold rather than listen to the loveable local scalliwags letting off fireworks in the street.

Wednesday night is a rubbish night for Bonfire Night, but if for those venturing forth a number of organised displays are scheduled for the Manchester area. IMHO the best of these is at Platt Fields, the park located rather incongruously slap bang in the middle of Rusholme - perecptive souls will immediately realise that one of the draws of this particular venue is the obligation to go for a curry afterwards, not to mention a cockle-warming brandy at Hardy's Well directly opposite the park.

The display starts at 7.30 with the lighting of the bonfire and is free, but there will be plenty of charity buckets around for donations to local worthy causes. A temporary funfair will have appeared as if by magic across the other side of the park, so after the oohs and aahs of the display itself, don't forget to consume a couple of toffee apples and try all the rides until you feel a bit sick.

Full details of all displays can be found at the Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service website.

Manchester Christmas Markets

This year's Christmas Markets will be bigger and better than ever, with organisers confirming that the stalls will run until Sunday December 21st after complaints last year that the market finished too early. There will also be six sites this year instead of five, with Exchange Square hosting stalls for the first time. Otherwise, it will be business as usual for this increasingly popular annual fixture, although apparently the main site in Albert Square has been redesigned to ease congestion (not before time - last year, the Albert Square site attracted an average of 43000 shoppers per day, most of whom seemed intent on jostling my drinking arm as I was trying to slurp the mulled wine that is pretty much compulsory at these events).

The Market begins on Tuesday 18th November (some kind of feigned sick-leave perhaps required), with Albert Square hosting the European Market, St Anne's Square the German Market, Brazennose Street the World Market, Arts & Crafts on Exchange Street, and additional stalls on New Cathedral Street and Exchange Square. One can almost hear the brass band warming up and smell the brandy-laden hot chocolate already...

12 Hours in Liverpool

A brave move perhaps, but what with Liverpool being current European City of Culture it seemed a shame not to venture west simply on the basis that Liverpool is full of Scousers. So we boarded our train at Picadilly on Saturday morning, and less than an hour later we were at Liverpool Lime Street Station, touristy map clutched firmly in hand (and handbag tucked even more firmly under arm).

First stop, the Liverpool Tate Gallery on Albert Dock. The docks are extremely impressive, and bring a nostalgic lump to the throat of anyone who fondly remembers Fred the Weatherman leaping about on his polystyrene map back when Richard & Judy were in charge of This Morning. Before embarking on any actual culture, we steeled ourselves with hot chocolate and toast in the Tate Cafe, and then dutifully examined three floors of modern art. To be fair, there is not much installation-style what-the-hell-is-that-meant-to-be art on show here; the Andy Warhol room is worth a look, and there are also works by Picasso, Degas, Henry Moore and Bridget Riley on show. Not sure about the huge furry body on the ground floor though.

Time for lunch: a fillet steak sandwich with fries at The Pan American Club on Albert Dock, a couple of minutes from the Tate. Thus restored, we tackled the impressive new shopping centre Liverpool 1, housing all the shops you might expect as well as an enormous John Lewis where we booked in to have our make-up done at Bobbi Brown (cunning - get nice lady to scrape off evidence of tiring day and replace with flattering new make-up). Many thanks to the lovely Angela who did such a good job on us.

Dinner was booked at Negresco, a modern Italian on the trendy Lark Lane - about £6 in a taxi from the shopping centre. The decor is stunning, the staff friendly and laid-back, the cocktail list ginormous and the food delicious - I had duck liver pate for starter, fillet steak for main, and finished with cinnamon creme brulee with sable biscuits. Prices are very reasonable, andthere is apparently a Negresco in Manchester which I shall duly investigate as soon as humanly possible.

Watch out for the 9,55pm train though - it's more like a bus than a train, rendering sleep impossible, and full of over-excited teenage girls (likewise). It got us back into Manchester around 11.15, safe and sound (slight pun intended).

Review: Shakespeare's Othello at The Lowry, Manchester

Teachers bring much of the stress they so frequently purport to suffer from upon themselves, doing such foolhardy things as booking tickets to see Othello on a Thursday evening. After teaching for six hours - including an hour on Othello - said teacher can think of few things she would rather do less than drive to The Lowry and sit through a couple of hours of Shakespeare: opening a bottle of wine and watching America's Next Top Model clearly being a preferable option.

I did, however, dutifully drag myself to The Lowry, and I am extremely glad I did. Frantic Assembly's current production of Othello, which finishes tonight, is the best interpretation of a Shakespeare play I have ever seen: genuinely ground-breaking without losing the power or the beauty of the original language. The setting has been updated to take place in a Northern pub called The Cypress, a witty reference to the section of the play that has been largely omitted from this production where Venice goes to war with Turkey over Cyprus, and the staging revolves (literally) around a pool table upon which much of the key action occurs.

The acting is without fault, with a particularly menacing Iago and a delightfully chavvy Desdemona standing out from an excellent cast. Don't be put off by the slightly scary fact that Frantic are exponents of "movement theatre" - all this means in practice is that the choreographed fight scenes are stunning, and that the energy of the performance never flags.

If you get a chance to see this production, then do: I can offer no better praise than that the theatre was pretty much filled with sixth form students (some of them mine) and they remained transfixed for the whole two hours - a feat never achieved by any of my lessons.

Special Offers at The Didsbury Pub, Didsbury

Maybe it's the threat of a credit crunch, or perhaps the prospect of the entire population of Didsbury retreating into hibernation, but The Didsbury pub has wheeled out a selection of pretty good food offers for September.

The (ironically?) inappropriately named Summer Menu offers good value at £9.95 for two courses and a glass of house wine. The menu offers a decent selection of options, none of which is remotely summery - I had the rump steak burger followed by a cheese plate so generous even I couldn't finish it, and Mr Liz had gammon, egg and chips followed by steamed treacle pudding and custard (summer menu indeed). This offer runs from Mondays to Thursdays until the end of September and requires a voucher.

Another tempting prospect runs next week only - two main courses for £10. Again, a voucher is required - these can be obtained from the pub's website.

The Art of Tea, Didsbury

Every so often, you come across a venue that is so perfect you feel slightly embarrassed never to have been there before, as well as grumpy at the thought of so many missed opportunities. The Art of Tea is such a place: an independent cafe and cake shop, tucked away on Barlow Moor Road just off the main Didsbury drag, just on the right side of scruffy with its polished floorboards and mismatched 70s-style chinaware. The menu is small but tempting: breakfast options include toasted tea-cakes, scrambled eggs and smoked salmon bagels, although these are thankfully available all day. There is also a decent range of sandwiches as well as a daily soup option; I had the sausage and red onion marmalade sandwich on toasted ciabatta (£3.80), while the husband had a bagel off the specials list, stuffed with salami, cheese and gerkins (£4.20).

The selection of teas is not as extensive as the name of the cafe suggests, but there's a good selection of coffees and smoothies as well. The home-made cakes are particularly delicious: we shared a triple-chocolate brownie and quite frankly wished we'd had one each. Then , just as you've wiped the crumbs from your mouth and have paid your modest bill, and you're thinking the place couldn't really be much better, you notice that at the back of the cafe lurks a second-hand bookshop, occupied by possibly the friendliest and most helpful man in existence. I feel ashamed I have not been here before and will attempt to rectify this error by coming here every Saturday for the rest of my life.

• The Art of Tea is at 47 Barlow Moor Road, Didsbury, Manchester M20 6TW, and is open Monday - Saturday from 9 till 6, and from 10 till 5 on a Sunday.
  

Restaurant Review: Gusto, Didsbury

Well, clearly being back at college and expected to teach people things is really quite tiring after 6 weeks off, and it is unreasonable to expect me to come home and cook my own supper. Thus I found myself in Gusto last night, eating food that I could probably have made much better myself, had I not been grappling with Wuthering Heights all day.

Gusto is the current guise of the Italian chain formerly known as Est Est Est, and is really rather disappointing, particularly as Est Est Est had improved no end in the months leading up to its disappearance. The menu remains pretty much the same, and the venue still has the same buzzy feel, with friendly staff and a great view into the kitchen area with its traditional wood oven. However, the food all arrived suspiciously quickly, and my starter of calamari was on the greasy side as well as being pretty chewy.

Main course was better: risotto served with prawns, mussels and yet more calamari was well flavoured with saffron and of a satisfyingly gloopy consistency to bring comfort on a dismally wet night. The dish was mussel-heavy, however, with few prawns in evidence, and the portion was far too large for such a rich dish. My husband's Diavolo pizza disappeared quickly and with no complaints other than it caused him to get flour on his wine glass.

The wine list is the real disappointment. All the Italian reds on offer seem over-priced; indeed, the £13 Syrah blend we went for was the only sub-£15 red on the menu.

All in all, OK but not great: next time I'll go to Felicini's, just across the road.

• Gusto is at 756 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Manchester M20 2DW, tel. 0161 445 8209.