THINGS move fast in today’s Manchester. Only in February developers revealed plans to create a four-storey food, drink and culture hub in the Mayfield Depot, as the vanguard of the £850 million regeneration of the 24 acre site, alongside Piccadilly Station, over the next decade.
Now they’ve announced it’s to be run by GRUB, apt name for local street food whizzes Jason and Jules Bailey, who this weekend run their final Food Fair at Alphabet Brewery, whose North Western Street Arches are a brick throw away from Mayfield.
As with their previous weekend venture at Runaway Brewery, they have simply outgrown the event they were curating. This Saturday gone, the Food Fair was rammed to the gills.
So space to grow and a high profile outlet for their regular traders and newcomers, but with new pressures naturally from London-based developers U+I with a deadline to start the new weekly street food fair at Mayfield from Friday, May 19 (12pm-10pm, free entry).
As promised, land on Baring Street ill be transformed by the temporary installation of a series of shipping containers housing street food traders at ground level with offices on upper levels. Each week there’ll be a changing roster of six of the city’s and country’s best street-food traders along 12 keg beer lines and two cask pumps serving exclusively northern beers including house ales created by Runaway.
Expect to find Manc street food favourites such as Yakumama, Holy Crab, What’s Your Beef and The Ottomen with visitors from further afield – already booked for the opening weekend are Thai food specialists Sai Buddha Belly (run by ex-Masterchef contestant and British Street Food Award winner Sai Deethwa, below right).
The announcement coincides with the launch of Mayfield’s new website, the place to follow developments.
The station was closed to passengers in 1960 but reopened as a Royal Mail depot between 1970 and 1986. Abandoned, it almost became reinvented as an arts venue after Manchester International Festival staged events there in 2013 and 2015, but all that fell through. The latest move looks much more positive.