After the Real Food Festival in London, we thought it would be interesting to highlight an out of town festival in the seaside resort of Broadstairs. Broadstairs Food Festival or Food Fayre as it is also known is an annual event and this year had over 100 stalls showcasing Kent produce. I visited on the third day of the Fayre, it was fairly busy when I arrived mid-morning, but by the afternoon it was packed with visitors sampling the free wares.
There was lots of English Wine, Flavoured Cider, Cheese and Chutney on display, along with the obligatory burger stands, which in this instance at least included local butchers selling venison burgers and wild boar and venison sausages.
Kent restaurants like the The Ambrette (Rye and Margate) and The Siam Kitchen (Broadstairs) were also represented and I couldn’t miss O’re the Moon the award winning Kent fudge company’s display of Scottish Tablet (not sure where that fits in as traditional Kent produce, but as a Scot I am not complaining).
The highlight of the day though had to be the Medieval Cooking demonstration from Mo Joslin of Farmhouse Kitchen. It was entertaining in between the disruptions from the dodgy sound system (the bane of so many outdoor festivals). I also got a good picture of another typical Food Festival event “The Swarm” (pictured above) homing in on the samples from the Cooking demonstration – a rather tasty pigeon dish. Funny it’s normally the Pigeons that do the swarming, although in Broadstairs it’s more likely to be Seagulls, which is all part of the British Seaside experience.