This weekend is the annual Bishop Auckland Food Festival and this year is by far the best yet.Combining street food, artisan producers and cookery demonstrations, there is something here for everyone and much more than you would expect.
The evolution of Bishop Auckland Food Festival has seen it move from the Palace grounds (where it was as much about arts & crafts as it was food) into the market place, then up the lower part of Newgate Street, back into the market place and now it spreads up Bondgate and into the car park on the site of the old Bus Depot and Clarendon Motors.
Old favourites are here; the wonderful Weardale Cheeses are one of a number purveyors of dairy produce (blessed are they all), The Chilli Jam Man, Screaming Chimp and Twisted Curry are stalwarts of providing zip and zing to the taste buds while Geordie Bangers remind us that good sausages make great meals. If it’s more than a sausage you’re looking for then Shaw Meats have a huge range of local meats, steaks, smoked and cured slices and brilliant versions of black pudding.
Adding to these are some new attendees; national award winning Pie’wich who combine a Brioch dough as a pie case and fill them with amazing combinations like 3 cheese, Lamb and Rosemary, Sea Bass, and smoked sausage. Wiga Wagaa add an international array of sauces and pickles perfect to create foods from the Caribbean, South Africa and the far east.
With all this food on offer you may be in need of a drink or two and this year the Food Festival represents the current trend and demand for all things Gin; Pitwheel, Little Quaker and Locksley are wonderful local distillers who know their craft, can guide and enhance your gin drinking with advice of how to serve and how to mix. If you’re looking for something different to gin then the amazing and award winning AB Gold Rum is like sipping ambrosia (the food of the gods, not the rice pudding).
Of course, you won’t just want to buy to take home, there is plenty of food cooked there for you to eat as you wander; Gyros’, Armenian flat breads, Gourmet Sausage Butties, Halloumi Fries, Giant Yorkshire Puds and in Rose Cottage the best farmhouse bakers with pies, rolls and cannonball sized scotch eggs.
Grab a brew from Caps Off, the Cocktail Pickers Club or Gin and Tonia and sit in the sun enjoying the sea of smiling faces, the waft of delicious smells and the feeling that you’re at the best food festival in the North East.