Bristol Food Festivals

Against all the odds, it appears to be Summer. Y'know, an actual one. I caught the sun while wearing a t-shirt, thereby giving myself an absolutely epic farmer's tan, so there's no going back now - even if it starts raining tomorrow I'll have the embarassing evidence that sunshine actually happened this year.

Summer means food festivals, and in Bristol (the spiritual home of the grubby festival goer) there's a lot of 'em about.

Last weekend was the Foodies Festival at Bristol Harbourside. It looked like fun, but there wasn't a huge amount of detail on the website, so at £12 a ticket I had no intention of going. Until I won two free tickets in a Twitter competition, that is.

It was bigger than I was expecting, quite sprawling really. There were large tents for demonstration, but other than that everything was outside. Rain wasn't a problem, but there wasn't any shade. This became an issue, as on the day I went it was hotter than the devil's own arsehole.

The selection was nicely varied, and the options for lunch were excellent. I had a tasty if rather oversalted sauteed potato, saucisson and comte tartiflette, but my friend Anna really won the round with the finest Rib Eye Sandwich I have ever seen. It came from El Gaucho Barbecue, and it looked and tasted amazing (she was good enough to let me try a bit).

Shhhh. The meat is resting.

There were your usual stands of fudge, olives and sauces, and all of pretty good quality. We decided to pick up enough ingredients to have a Ploughman's for dinner. We got 'Wyfe of Bath' cheese from The Bath Soft Cheese company, some goat's cheddar, a garlic pickle from The Cherry Tree, and some venison salami. All were delicious, but the goat's cheddar rather suffered from the heat. The garlic pickle was particularly good.

In danger of sounding like a weak, wilting flower, I am simply not built for hot weather. I sweat like someone turned a tap on, and the efficiency of the irrigation of my underboobs make me consider using their design as a way to alleviate drought in sub-Saharan Africa. This was a heat that even gelato couldn't handle. I needed to sit down and have some fizz.

Classy

While Anna had a coconut.

Classier

Usually I would be happy to wander round indefinitely, but considering the heat (did I mention that? It was a bit warm) we didn't hang around too long. Despite that it was a well organised and varied festival, although I doubt I'd go again as I'm more a fan of the 'free' variety.

Speaking of free food festivals, guess where I went this morning? The Love Food festival in the Paintworks. No pictures this time, I left my camera at home.

Although much smaller, I think I enjoyed this one even more. The stalls with cooked food were outside and the rest of the stalls were inside, although in a nice airy, temperate space. As soon as we got there we were approached by a boy of about 12 offering us samples of baby back ribs. He had style, that kid, and the kind of grifting attitude that wouldn't have looked out of place on the set of Oliver! The ribs were pretty good too. Nice one.

We had pies for lunch. Mine was a pork pie, hand made with British Lop pork by a very nice middle aged lady. Her whole stall had the unpretentious air of the School Fete about it - a mish-mash of pies, cakes and preserves, all obviously made (to a very high standard, of course) in her own kitchen. Pete had a much more professional looking 'Bath' pie from the local company Lovett Pies. It had braised beef, ale and blue cheese in it. Very tasty.

Pete also got a hot chilli sauce called 'Fire Wata' from  Sister Gee. He was impressed with what he tried, and the man knows his chilli, so it's probably good. We went home with some Potato and Rosemary bread and some really ripe strawberries.

I think I'm about food festivalled out for now, so instead I might go round someone's house, take a look in their cupboards, then smile and say 'I might come back later' with no intention of doing so. Practically the same thing.