You can’t really claim to be a hardcore Manchester foodie without a visit to Food Fight, so last night we felt it was time to rectify the situation. For those of you not familiar, Food Fight is something like a festival but indoors and the focus is mainly on the food, making it officially my favourite kind of festival. This wasn’t our first Beatstreet event as we’d visited the summer pop up next to us in the N.Qtr several times and were big fans so were pretty excited to see what was in store.

The venue is brilliant, suitably cool and ‘warehousey’. It was great not to have to pay to get in and though we expected it to be mobbed inside we were pleasantly surprised to find it pretty spacious but still buzzy. You do have to pay for food with tokens but they’re easily bought and more than easy to use up.

Now, more importantly to come to the food, we sampled quite a variety of treats, some more successful than others.

First stop was Dimsumsu, as I had a craving for some steamed dumplings. Unfortunately this was a bit of a letdown, a half hour wait later and I had quite a lot of undercooked, seemingly previously frozen dim sum. Uninspiring as you might see from my (pretty awful) picture. The team were lovely though and to their credit gave me some pretty great fried dumplings whilst I was waiting, wish I’dve ordered those…

Next stop Dirty Food Revolution. As a stall it didn’t look like much but I’m going to struggle to describe how good the burger we had from there was. Quite simply, one of the best burgers we’d ever eaten (and I’m not even a burger person). We ordered one packed with bacon, cheese, frazzles, scratching pieces and with a slather of sweet glaze on top. It was amazing. The glaze was really well judged and not too sweet, the cheese tasted good quality and the burger itself was very well cooked (still pink in the middle). As burgers go it was up there, top marks guys.

Next up an extra special poutine, topped with sausage from Bangers and Bacon. It was good, you can’t really not like chips with gravy and cheese (brings back fond memories from my student days). The gravy could have been a little richer and the sausage wasn’t what I’d call the perfect partner for the rest but overall a good, dirty treat. I’ve got a photo but as it looks like carnage slathered in gravy and cheese I’d rather not share that.

Last stop, for something a bit sweeter and more refreshing we headed to Tomfoolery, a lovely retro looking cake stall. Here we had a really unusual but really enjoyable dessert. We didn’t have a cake or a cookie (though they did look good). We were intrigued by something billed as ‘celery and rhubarb’ so went for that. It turned out to be one of the most interesting and unexpected things we’ve tried in a while. It was a celery sorbet (sweet and not at all unpleasant) layered with pieces of sweet rhubarb with yoghurt and granola. It was a dream and after all that grease was a very welcome change. Very impressed.

All in all a good night’s work. I’m looking forward to what else Beat Street will be cooking up.