This man reads the worst reviews he can find to restaurant owners and records their reactions

Written by Yvonne Goldsmith-Rybka
Last updated 7 years ago
City of Manchester, Community, Food & Drink, Stockport

Meet Matt White. He co-presents the breakfast show on Radio XS Manchester. He is also the founder of Fodder, the only food and drink podcast in Greater Manchester.

After spending a decade working in various bars and restaurants in Manchester including Pure Space, The Corner House and Croma, Matt moved into radio and started working for BBC Radio Manchester. During his time there he produced and presented Gourmet Night, a weekly food and drink programme. He was then asked to host the Manchester Food & Drink Awards, which he’s been doing for the last seven years.

He started the podcast in 2016 after being amazed no one else in Manchester was doing it – pretty unbelievable when you consider how the food and drink scene has grown and how many food bloggers there are.

He produces one episode a month and covers everything from different produce, celebrity chefs, people working in the industry and ordinary people who just love food and drink -their stories, their passions, and how discovering good food has changed their lives.

Matt’s podcasts take us to places we wouldn’t usually get to.

In The Body Coach podcast, Matt meets Joe Wicks who talks about how we we can change our eating habits, which culminates in six hours of foraging in Bollington. We get the edited version, obviously.

The Stockport podcast looks at how the food and drink landscape there is changing and how things are really starting to happen, with suggestions for new places you can visit and culinary events to put in your diary.

His last podcast, Not Just Soup, is Matt’s favourite so far. In it, he meets a homeless man called Rachel (not a typo) who calls himself the Jay Rayner of the street and reviews the soup kitchens he visits, talking passionately about how good food can give back dignity to the homeless. The podcast was picked up and retweeted by Jay Rayner and shared by the Observer Food Monthly.

Matt is currently is making a film series in which he goes into restaurants and sits down with their owners and chefs, reading them the very worst reviews he can find to get their reactions. That should make for comfortable viewing. The first in the series with Gary Usher from Hispi is due out at the end of May.

Why not have a listen?

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