Just a very quick one to say that if you hadn't noticed via the Food And Drink Summit programme, Loyd Grossman's band The New Forbidden will be rounding off the day with a live set during a final wind-down session we're calling The Social. Never caught them live before? Well, they sound a little something like this:

One or two (in)famous local recipes can make or break how a region's indigenous food scene is perceived nationally. Obviously, any local delicacy that's either mad as a bat (or just universally gag-inducing) will have become THE defining culinary marker for your hometown long ago, and in many ways there's precious little any of us can do to change that. All well and good if you happen to live in Melton Mowbray, Cumberland or Cornwall; not so great if your most famous homegrown kitchen creation is some terrifying gelatinous aberration involving braised pigeon necks quivering under a tripe duvet. Which almost certainly doesn't actually exist anywhere...but you get our point.

Some of these so-called regional dishes are pretty bizarre though, and none more so than our own much-debated Manchester tart. Fair enough with the custard, pastry and jam - so far, so classic Northern English - but what, pray, do flaked coconut and Maraschino cherries have to do with the stoically granite-hued streets of inter-war Mancunia? It sounds like something made up at 2am by a swaying post-pub snack-hunter, having flung wide the pantry doors only to remember he hadn't actually done any proper shopping in at least a fortnight.

In recent months, we've been doing more than our fair share here at The Food And Drink Summit HQ to try and add a new jewel to Manchester's culinary crown - that's a post for a different day, but suffice to say it involves a new twist on a certain hard-boiled savoury snack that you might have heard a little something about. But until we get back to you with the insider take on all that, it's good to know that such solid lunch spots as the Left Bank cafe bar at the People's History Museum are continuing to offer such oddities as the Manchester tart on their menus.

Our question for the time being is, what other local specialities have you managed to root out on restaurant menus around town? And which ones would you like to see, but never do? And, either way, which ones are your personal favourites/phobias? (If anyone can come up with a legitimate dish involving braised pigeon necks, we'll make and eat it ourselves.)

A cheap, young (and therefore deliciously fruity, unlike its fruit-faded older cousins), fairly light young Rioja the other night led a few of us here at The Food & Drink Summit HQ into an lively debate about how much, or how little, we thought we knew about wine.

Most of us had to admit we were probably far less clued-up we would like - and given our lowbrow aspirations, that's not very clued up at all - when it came to recognising differences between regions, although the general feeling was one of modest confidence when it came to checking off the more general characteristics of basic grape varieties. We even awarded ourselves bonus points for agreeing that, contrary to popular myth, you can perfectly well enjoy a medium-bodied red with certain fish..although, er, we could only think of two such dishes we'd ever tried it with. Anyone out there got any ideas for a perfectly matched fish/red combo...?

Anyway, the wine debate then took on a different, altogether fruitier twist: we got on to the subject of non-grape wines that we'd tried, and indeed lesser spotted fruit booze of all varieties. Sloe gin was of course quick to surface as a favourite, as were elderflower and damson wines - but we quickly ran out of steam when it came to listing which other ones we'd actually tasted in recent memory. Or indeed ever.

We know they're out there, so why do we never see them on menus? Obviously availability will to some extent be dictated by season, although the length of the fermentation process (and indeed the shelf life of the finished product) ought to make this largely irrelevant. Would any of us buy a non-grape wine to have with dinner, for example? If so, which ones work the best, and do you know of anywhere that regularly serves them?

Thanks to Emma Wimbury for the picture.

One of the panel discussions chalked in for the Food & Drink Summit, entitled In The Middle Of A Chain Reaction, has got us particularly excited. Food journalist Matthew Fort and restaurateur Paul Heathcote will be among the speakers for that session, as will chef and author Fergus Henderson.

Not being squeamish types when it comes to tucking in, we’re huge fans of Henderson’s ‘nose to tail eating’ philosophy - essentially the concept of getting the greatest possible food return out of any slaughtered animal - and we can’t wait to hear how his views on the matter might inform the debate about the merits of chain restaurants versus one-off independent establishments.

In the meantime though, Henderson’s ideas got us thinking about the concept of nose to tail eating closer to home - and specifically, which restaurants in the North West offer dishes that seem to adhere to Henderson’s ideas. Offal has obviously been making great strides towards getting itself back on high-end menus in recent years, and chefs like Manchester’s own Robert Owen Brown at the Mark Addy (and previously at The Angel) has long sung the praises of black pudding, kidneys, oxtail and the like.

We’re hopelessly addicted to Brown’s black pudding potato cakes with poached hens egg, and we recently even found ourselves loving a dish incorporating goodly quantities of tripe. So which nose to tail-type dishes have you hunted down around the city? More importantly, which ones worked from the word go, and which still have a tough job of convincing you?

Not that we’re fond of the sauce or anything, but of all the celebrity panel discussions slated for the Food & Drink Summit, we can’t help feeling we’ll be paying extra close attention to the afternoon session entitled Twelve Bar Blues: The last waltz of the great British boozer? 

As (almost worryingly) keen pub-goers ourselves, the apparent struggle of the traditional hand-pull watering hole over recent years an issue close to our hearts - well, our livers, at any rate - and one which consistently seems to elicit a good deal of heated debate from the British boozer-going public. 

Is it fair to level the blame for the downturn solely at the smoking ban? Do people simply prefer identikit chrome-and-neon bars that pump out spine-rattling beats until last orders at 2am? And why should we feel any particular sympathy pangs for the post-ban pub industry, when pretty much every other form of business has suffered equally testing times of late? 

Whatever the outcome, we’re definitely looking forward to a debate between the panellists (including TV chef/beer enthusiast Richard Fox, and Marble Brewery’s Jan Rogers) on the matter... but we’re also dead keen to hear views from other pub-goers, landlords and the like.

We’re planning to return to the question of whether time really is in danger of being called on the great British boozer at regular intervals over the next month, so feel free to air your views here - and stay tuned for further input on the issue from Manchester publicans, regulars and stay-aways alike. In the meantime, make ours a double...

To come and hear what our expert panel of speakers have to say on the subject, get your Food and Drink Summit ticket here.

[Image taken by Adam B used under a Creative Commons license.}