Alnwick Food Festival

Since the launch of the Alnwick Food Festival, the town has been named as the sixth best place for gastronomic activity in the country by a new guide to British food. The BMW 1 Series Good Food Ride said Alnwick’s restaurants, food festival and farmers’ markets have contributed to a thriving ‘gastrohub’. To be placed in the book’s top 20, each destination had to reach certain criteria which the panel of judges felt were necessary to be defined as a gastrohub. Each place had to hold a farmers’ market, have a traditional dish or destination ingredient, hold a food festival, have a food hero who is passionate about local sourcing and a Michelin-starred restaurant, the only category Alnwick failed in. Click here for more.

Alnwick is set to be the culinary capital of Northumberland again when the 4th Food Festival hits the town on September 20.21 2008. Organisers Alnwick Lions have packed this festival with even more food fun and gastronomical games.

The Market Place will be the centre of the action as more stalls jam into the square. Fresh and local produce will be on offer, with everything from top quality ice cream to freshly sourced local meat from some of the region’s finest farms.
Street entertainment throughout the town will keep the crowd smiling with the Samande Jugglers juggling with fire, a New Orleans jazz trio, the wacky Bread and Butter Theatre Company, Beefy and Lamby, and the chance to meet the festival’s very own mascot, Alf the Lion.
The Town Hall will be transformed into the Food Festival Bistro selling snacks, drinks and local delicacies between 10am and 4pm over the weekend. A wine-tasting event and this year's WI competition will also be held there.
The Northumberland Hall will play host to the popular cookery demonstrations, with the first-floor hall kitted out with a demonstration kitchen, camera and large screen to ensure all budding cooks in the audience can see how it’s done by the professionals.
The hall will also house entries to a school food display, involving first schools throughout north Northumberland.
The Playhouse will also host some of Saturday ’s action - this is where the Young Chef of the Year competition will be held. The ever popular Ready Steady Cook-style competition also makes a return this year, starring TV agony aunt Denise Robertson and Durham cricketer Mitchell Claydon.
Demonstrations of healthy cooking will be held in the town's Pottergate Centre.

Don Watson, chairman of the food festival committee, said: “Alnwick Lions were delighted with the success of our first two food festivals and are aiming to build on that and make this year’s event even bigger and better.

“We view it as a long-term community project which, we hope, will grow to become a permanent feature in the events calendar of the district, and the culinary calendar of the North East.