16/09/2017

FoodFest 2017 Newcastle-Under-Lyme

FoodFest is being held in Newcastle-Under-Lyme this weekend and I went along on Saturday morning to see what it was all about. There’s still one day left, so here’s a quick tour of what you’ll find at FoodFest.

FoodFest is a community group based in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, dedicated to raising awareness of food waste and food sustainability as well as helping end food poverty in Staffordshire.

Since 2014 they’ve held a community event in the town centre with market stalls, childrens’ activities, music, dancing, charity organisations and street food.

This year’s FoodFest runs from Friday 15 to Sunday 17 September 2017, with each day having its own theme. Friday was Schools Day with activities exploring the theme of sustainability, Saturday is Community Day and Sunday will be World Food Day. There’s also a daily farmers’ market as well as street food stalls every day.

I’m a relative newcomer to Staffordshire and haven’t been to FoodFest before and decided to take a look on Saturday morning.

Street Food

We arrived at FoodFest quite early, so the first job was to get some breakfast from one of the street food vendors.

The bright stall of The Oatcake Kitchen immediately caught my eye. Along with the usual bacon, sausage and cheese, they were offering ‘pizza’ oatcakes like margherita and pepperoni and even a hot dog oatcake.

But, given the hour, I decided to stick with a sausage, bacon and cheese oatcake. And very good it was too, the outside made nice and crispy on The Oatcake Kitchen’s grill.

As we spent pretty much all morning at FoodFest, we also had lunch at one of the other stalls.

Enticing aromas drew us to ‘A Taste of Thai’. They were serving up green and red Thai curries, noodles, as well as fishcakes and spring rolls.

I had a wonderfully spicy and creamy Thai red curry with pork, served with rice and just £5.

Farmers Market

As well as street food to eat while you’re at FoodFest, there’s plenty of opportunities to buy and take home from the daily farmers’ market.

Perhaps you’d like a tasting session with local brewers Weal Ales? We did, and took a few bottles home too.

Farm On Wheels

I was really pleased to see that FoodFest is doing its bit to help educate children about where our food comes from.

The Farm on Wheels is a mobile farm that visits schools as well as care homes and events like this. They’d brought along some friendly farm animals for visitors to meet.

Food Charities: FareShare

Several food related charities have stalls at FoodFest, including FareShare.

FareShare tackles food waste by working with the food industry to rescue surplus food and redistributes it to charities and community groups.

FareShare currently has around twenty Regional Centres, including the West Midlands.

Activities & Entertainment

There’s lots of children’s activities and entertainment at FoodFest, including the Ladybird Eco-art caravan and their Urban Garden Safari.

To keep the kids busy, there’s also a climbing wall and an intriguing way to juice fruit and vegetables…

But everyone seemed to enjoy watching the the colouful dancers who attracted large crowds.

Community

From my first visit, I’d say FoodFest is a great way to bring the community together around food as well as livening up the high street.

Visitors can learn about issues such as food waste, sustainability and food poverty in a lively, entertaining way while enjoying street food and supporting local producers at the farmers’ market.

There’s still a day left of this year’s FoodFest and I really recommend you go along.

Update: FoodFest is now GrowFest

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