Food festival season is upon us. To celebrate, we’ve put together a whiz bang interactive map of the UK and Ireland plotting the biggest and most interesting events happening over the next four months. Each blurb comes complete with all the embedded links you could ever need, further tips on local foodist attractions and a hopefully illuminating and entertaining overview of each shindig.
With over 50 events listed so far, this takes us up, with one or two exceptions, to mid-September. It been a sizeable task, and one which has highlighted some curious trends, some sterling creative work by festival organisers and a few worrying mutations in the form. So what can we learn?
Well, you’ll not be entirely surprised to know that barbecuing is a definite mini-trend this summer: everyone loves a barbecue, it’s technically complex but not dauntingly so, and this macho cooking style reaches out beyond the core female foodie demographic.
Similarly, chillies are, ahem, hot. The most cartoonish of cooking ingredients is fuelling its own subset of festivals, with at least five dedicated chilli fests scheduled for this summer. Some of these events retain a base note of seriousness, but elsewhere the tone is very much one of wackiness, of novelty cocktails, outrageous heat and chest-thumping chilli eating competitions. They are, essentially, themed parties.
As misguided as chilli ice-cream is the desire among certain events companies to fuse those two successful separate entities, the food festival and the music festival. You can see the rationale behind such cross-pollination, the 2 + 2 = 5 logic of it. However, I’m bemused as to why anyone who cared deeply about either food or music would mix the two.
You pays your money you takes your choice, I suppose. Although, increasingly, that choice might leave a substantial hole in your wallet, thanks to the multitude of glitzy entertainment extravaganzas out there, whose tickets command stadium gig or West End theatre prices. One adult ticket for the BBC Good Food Shows, MasterChef Live, the Real Food Festival or Taste of Dublin would set you back upwards of £20. You will likewise pay around £10 entrance at many more UK festivals.
The most egregious offender is Taste of London, which not only charges £26 on the door – even before you’ve bought any of the tokens required to sample the guest restaurants’ dishes – but which has simultaneously developed a complex caste system of VIP and exclusively ticketed spaces. The Made in Chelsea of food festivals will this year, in association with Tatler, launch a new Laurent-Perrier Secret Garden, where people keen enough to pay £95 / £125 a pop will be able to enjoy intimate QA sessions with chefs, including René Redzepi.
Thankfully, there are still many free and / or affordable festivals on the calendar – events true to the food festival’s origins as a community-based celebration of good food. The variety on offer is astonishing. From socio-cultural examinations of Jewish food to specialist scrutiny of Hereford’s perries and ciders, informed whisky tours to street food festivals, real ales to artisan cheeses, coffee to Lincolnshire sausages, there is a food or drink festival out there for even the crankiest, most monomaniacal food enthusiast.
There is also a great number of festivals keeping it real. For every festival created as a blatant tourist initiative, rather than as a natural expression of that locality’s indigenous food culture. For every festival that relies on buying in TV talent like James Martin and Gino d’Acampo, there are an equal number of festivals offering a genuine platform for regional independent artisan-makers and chefs. Cornwall Food Drink Festival, York Food Festival, Brighton Hove Food and Drink Festival, to name but a few, Word of Mouth salutes you.
As for which I rate personally, if I had to choose three this year to attend, I would have to go for Abergavenny, for its cerebral debate strand, EAT!, for its creative ingenuity and its dynamic outreach work among non-foodies, and Ludlow: the original, and a festival which, in its commitment to regional Marches talent, in its refusal to tinker with a winning formula, offers an experience that is unique to the town.
But what about you? Where will you be deliberating, cogitating, digesting and shopping this summer? Which are you favourite food festivals? Let us know about any particular corkers I missed and we’ll update the guide with some of your suggestions.