The Great Dorset Chilli Festival; BBC Good Food Show; Clitheroe Food Festival; Banbury Food Fair; Norfolk Food and Drink Festival; Fishstock Brixham; Liverpool Food Festival; Taste London; Stroud Food Festival.... How does that make you feel? Excited, enthusiastic, tastebuds on full point? Or a bit weary as the list of 'local' food festivals around the country grows longer than the list of Gregg Wallace's exes.
It's easy enough to feel a little, well, jaded at this time of year if you consider yourself a full-time foodie. Once upon a time there were a few hit festivals you simply had to go to, to keep up with the latest and the greatest taste sensations, meet the chefs (eek!), get a treasured book signed, rave about the extra virgin olive oil from the teeny-weeny estate in the mountains of Hindustan (? Alright... could happen) and come home sighing with pleasure at the gustatory revelations had that weekend. You could tick them off: Ludlow, Taste, BBC Good Food Show (if only for the die-hard groupies), Whitstable Oyster Fair.... Every now and then a new festival would spring up on, say, Clapham Common or in Somerset and you would make a lip-pursing mental note on the calendar for next year.
It may be the very... sameness that's creating the lack of appetite for these festivals. The same stalls selling gourmet beef burgers and sausages, a few local cheeses, some nice (or not) bread and jams, food-to-go stalls from end to end so no-one need spend a minute without something in their mouth... From the councils' point of view, they're a no-brainer: rent space at a premium cost to local businesses who'll fit it out themselves, bring in new trade to the town, hire a fair or band, job done and everyone's a winner. It used to be the local food festival was an opportunity for local restaurants to offer a taster (a simple lone bite) to lure trade through the doors, a door to open for new customers on artisan specialities such as pork pies, black pudding, chillies. Now they seem to have been cloaked in a tedious uniformity that makes visitors struggle to identify the genuinely unique and exciting.
Of course, for small producers up and down the country they are a godsend, but many complain that the food-to-go stalls make it almost impossible to sell packaged goods. People are much less interested in buying something to take home on a full stomach. Moreover, the constant availability of the obligatory 'free' tasters means visitors (who never become customers) can lurch from stall to stall, 'tasting' without actually committing to a purchase.
Are you a food-festival-goer? Is there a really good one in your area you want to tell us about? Or has the concept lost its meaning in terms of originality and enterprise? Do you even bother to go to your local festival if there is one - and if there isn't, should there be? Do tell...
