The Foodies Festival

Inverleith Park, Edinburgh

7th – 9th August

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Senses explode as you walk into the Foodies Festival at Edinburgh’s Inverleith Park. Smells of worldwide cuisine, sounds of laughter and various oow’s and ahh’s can be heard over the backdrop of the live band, The Deadly Winters. Who were being enjoyed on a day which can certainly be defined as very lively and perfectly summery!

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This festival is a creamy dream for food lovers, your tongue will be twisted in a tornado of tantalising tastings which will keep you busy for a fair few hours, until you have worked up an apatite worthy of a main mean, from which many more hours may be required, just to make a decision on which stall to surrender yourself to.

You can fill your cupboards with a plethora of produce form local growers and suppliers, because as well as foods from farther afield, there are small businesses from just down the road promoting their wonderful foods and drinks too. You can dribble over everything; from coconut water to gin, cider to rhubarb and apple jam, raspberry flavoured salad dressing to fiery chilli sauce, more cheese than any single monger could mong, veg from the sea, fruit from a tree, stuff from the ground, it all can be found! Meat of a duck, beef, chicken and lamb, pork is here too and lobster at the seafood stand. You can learn to cook or professionally shake a cocktail. You can take the kids to the wee theatre or fling them on the bouncy castle to keep them busy, and there is plenty space to laze about on the grass or under the canopy of long seated tables, until you are ready to be rolled out at the end of the day. Not sure if they provide ‘rolling out’ as a service, so take a friend, you may have to Tweedledee & Tweedledum it between the two of you.

Lots of fun, the ideal place to ruin your gym routine and diet. And if you know a fussy eater…bring them here.. there is not a better place to be schooled about the deliciousness of variety. After struggling to locate any sobrasada (Spreadable Chotizo from Mallorca) in Edinburgh recently I was delighted to be able to pick up some at the The Spanish Hamper Stall. I also ate the hottest chilli sauce I have ever had. But true to the proprietors word it wore off in precisely 6 minutes aided by a sip of Edinburgh Gin Distillery’s delicious raspberry Liqueur.

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From paella to passionfruit fudge this is a wonderful chance to try new culinary fusion. My only reservation was that we only seemed to find one stall selling plain bottled water! (I am sure there must have been more somewhere.) But we bought the last bottle they had, and that was at 3pm. Eek! The bars only provided the alcohol they are promoting, so maybe this needs to be considered for next year by the event organisers. (Or bring your own to be safe.) I wanted to eat myself a full stone of this deliciousness. Yummers!

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Reviewer : Bobbi Mckenzie