Fur Coat, No Knickers: Has Manchester Hospitality Traded Community for Clout?
Somewhere along Peter Street, a server sets a steak ablaze with a blowtorch while three neighbouring tables reach for their phones. Between plush velvet booths, synthetic cherry blossoms and lighting calibrated to a perpetual golden hour, central Manchester’s hospitality scene has become something of a live stage production. It is atmospheric theatre, carefully engineered to make an evening look extraordinary on screen, even as the rain lashes against the windows on Deansgate. But behind the theatrical glow lies a much less glamorous economic reality.
A Travel Guide to Firenze Schiacciata
A recent trip to Florence offered all the beauty of art and architecture that we were hoping for, but I’m sure it has been spoken about at length by far too many people to warrant another person waxing lyrical on Botticelli’s Venus or Michaelangelo’s David. Instead, I have decided to wax lyrical on Tuscany’s famous sandwich, the schiacciata, a focaccia bread that has been squashed, and then sliced for sandwich bread. I thought that since it was such a large part of our trip, being the most reliable and easily accessible lunch food, that surely it deserves just as much attention, if not more, as the art. After all, although art does feed the soul, sandwiches feed the heart and the body, which is perhaps a more useful purpose.