Devizes Food & Drink Festival, Back for 2022

Later than usual, the Devizes Food & Drink Festival is quite possibly the last major summer event in Devizes; their programme of events has gone live online now, the box office opens on August 12th; fill your boots, at least your tummy!

The scrumptious proceedings run from Saturday 24th September to Sunday 2nd October, which, if you’ve not been before, operates as a vast series of both free and paid events, obviously food and drink related. So not to distract your browsing pleasure from their website, let’s just breeze over the goodies, summarise and send you in their direction, shall we?

The biggie is on the opening day; Saturday 24th September, 10am to 4pm, Devizes Market Place comes alive with the Street Food & Artisan Producer Market. Wadworth sponsored, with bar and pub game, it’s a bustling market of self-produce, where you can gas all you like, with purveyors of fine foods, blag a taster, buy a jar or two. Music comes from The Decades.

From there on afterwards, there’s a number of interesting and varied side-events, a movable feast at Winkworths, a meet with Rowdefield Farm’s beekeepers, a teddy bear’s picnic for ten years and under at Hillworth on Sunday 25^th, dinner at the Wiltshire Shooting Centre, in the railway tunnel. The usual great foodie quiz is at The Literary & Scientific Institute on the Monday, entomologist, author, academic, television presenter and explorer George McGavin will be talking insects, and how we should be incorporating them into our diet, they’ll be reliving school dinners, Guardian’s creator of the How to Cook the Perfect column, Felicity Cloake will be in the house, and the Gourmet Brownie Kitchen gets in on the act on Thursday 29th September, with an expert from Hilperton based coffee company Dusty Ape.

Of all events from a murder mystery dinner, foraging, loitering in allotments, Come Dine With Us, dog food dinner for your four legged friend at The fox and Hounds, and pig welfare farm visit, the most un-foody has to be Wadworth signwriting workshop; not quite sure how that irrelevant one popped in there! But one of the best new comers to the usual goings-on, The World Food event sees the festival’s closure on Saturday 2^nd October at the Corn Exchange, where for 50p a taste, you can sample flavours of the world, from Austria to Zimbabwe, exploring real home cooking from local residents who have far flung roots. New countries cooking this year include the Philippines, Guatemala and Mexico.

See, my belly is rumbling already now! Writing food festival previews should be likened to going to the supermarket, neither should you attempt on an empty stomach!