Devizes Food & Drink Festival launched their 2025 programme of events today. Running from Saturday 20th to the 28th September, the Box Office opens online and at Devizes Books on August 11th; can you wait that long or is your tummy rumbling already?!
The free Street Food and Artisan Market will take place in the Devizes Market Place on Saturday 20th, opening the festival. There’s tales and food of Greece, cheese & wine tasting, a teddy bear’s picnic, an exploration of the culinary traditions that have bound French and Russian cuisine together, lunch in the Men’s Shed, local nutritionist and personal trainer Matt Fruci, lunch of Indian street food at Indigo Antiques, Polly’s lunch on the Water Gypsy, The great Foodie Quiz, a Wadworth tour, a murder mystery dinner, Come Dine With Us, and lots more.
The festival ends with the usual World Food Day, something I very much enjoyed last year when I got my fill! That’s free entry at the Corn Exchange on Sunday 28th September. 12.30 they say, but get there early as the queue will be huge and so might your appetite!
Devizes Food & Drink Festival came to a close for this year with the most amazing World Food event at the Corn Exchange on Sunday…it was yummy on an international scale!
It’s an annual finale I’ve missed in previous years, but was persuaded to attend by Dora who was there with a sweet Hong Kong dish of tapioca and melon. And that’s the premise, any local with ethnic roots is invited to serve a taster dish from their country of origin. One raffle ticket equals one dish, a strip of five costs just £3, the event is free to attend.
This arrangement makes this event arguably the best one on the Food & Drink Festival program, if the others require a ticket and the opening food market, while diverse in choices of tucker, vendors are left to their own devices and tend to sell fuller dishes at fuller costs, therefore should you wish to try something different you’re committed to a single choice or two. Here you circulate the hall safe in the knowledge that if the dish was not to your liking, it’s only set you back sixty pee, and there’s lots more options priced the same. It is a reserved and courteous dash, being a first-come-first-served situation and only a set amount of dishes from each table; I arrived punctual, and peckish. Best advice I could give about this event is to try and arrive before me!
For this, those who know the score with this event are queuing as far as the old Natwest bank waiting for it to open as if it was an Oasis reunion gig! And they were right to, it was fantastic and gorged-aciously gorgeous, and I’d kick myself for not attending before if I wasn’t balancing three dishes of various national dishes!
If you know me well you’ll know I do love my grub, and I’ve eclectic tastes, save eggs! I’m in my element here, trekking the world like Jules Verne’s cutlery, without leaving the Devizes Corn Exchange. Though there’s less than eighty tables, it’s certainly plentiful. First stop, Zimbabwe for some tasty Sadza Balls, onto a lovely Romanian stew I’m not even going to attempt to spell, and then I’m back in Africa, for South African Chakalaka; loved the name, preferred the dish, it was probably my favourite if I was forced to pick one!
It is perhaps for the adventurous, this event, and unlike a more multicultural place, we’re restricted here to Italian, Chinese and Indian restaurants, therefore to explore the more unusual is key to experiencing the best of the occasion. With this ethos, the Western European tables aren’t attracting the same attention as the Eastern European, African or Asian ones. Nevertheless, I tried the Italian one as they had something I’d not seen before, Lenticchie De Capodana, a lentil stew which they told me is traditionally served at New Year and is therefore more of a household dish than something you’d find in restaurants. Herein is the interesting angle of the event as a whole, these are home cooked dishes and not pampered or adapted to an international palette, as meals in restaurants might well be.
There were a few tables I did not try, such as Scottish haggis, I didn’t so in favour of the more exotic ones, and prevention from over-indulging (of which I was close to the border already.) I mean, when do you get to try Rourou patties with Dalo from Fiji, in Devizes, huh?! This one was particularly unusual, and tasty, as equally as those from the Ukraine, a berry and cream pudding from Denmark, even some apple layered sponge cake from Guernsey; yes, they had puddings too, get in!
Though they didn’t have any drinks, so take a bottle of water with you next year. But do go, it was scrumptious, communal, and a grand finale to the Food & Drink Festival. An event I’m unusually tempted to summarise using science, yes science; step aside Heston Blumenthal!
So, forget about Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve, and the pun, and focus on Darren’s Remembering Curve! Eddinghaus’ curve is a hypothesis, his methodology is wrought with debatable flaws, especially by modern thinking. Affective Context Theory is the new bag, emphasising vehemence in memory retention, in other words, you cannot learn anything you’ve no interest in. My curve is the physical example, it’s my belly, and once filled so too is my retention to knowledge, because I’m interested in filling my gut. I learned a lot today about different world foods, and I’m likely to remember it because Darren’s Remembering Curve is particularly full now with new foods I’ve not tried before, see? Okay, don’t base your PHD on it, as long as you get the general gist!
Awl, here’s to another year, then, cheers, and thank you to all the organisers of the festival and everyone who provided a dish to try; I’m full!
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Hot sausage and mustard! Devizes Food & Drink Festival got off to a yummy, yummy, yummy start Saturday, leaving Devizes folk with love in their tummies, exotic burgers, pies and unusual street food! But the renowned annual food festival doesn’t end with the Market, we’ve a week of grub related events ahead of us, pass the soy sauce……
Unpredictable weather didn’t prevent masses turning out for the free market in, conveniently, the Market Place. And they were blessed by a mostly clement outcome. Tucking umbrellas underarm they noshed and drank till their heart’s content with an array of interesting street food stalls, bars and music.
It was all ukuey shenanigans entertaining the feeding folk with a five-piece skiffle ensemble called the Strungout Ukuleles, and they were a satisfying choice. Surrounding them, hay bales were occupied by seated feasters, the Wadworth bar keeping them refreshed. Hawkstone was another choicest booze outlet, but being endorsed by thick slice of gammon Jeremy Clarkson put me off a smidgen, so I opted for a pint from the Dumb Post’s mobile bar, as it came with a delicious pie; not so dumb, huh?!
Food-wise we were truly spoiled for choice. Popular lunches seemed to be from the Japanese noodle stall, an Indian street food one, but particularly The Tibetan one with their tasty momos, and Calne’s vintage yellow caravan, home of Jamaican jerkin’ Miss Aubree’s Kitchen, which is like a reggae riddim ina ya belly!
Purbeck supplied the ice cream, and there were more cakes and brownies than I could even eat in a month! Stalls selling homemade sauces, preserves, gins, you name it, where there. I was instructed not to return home without fudge, which was an easy challenge and met with my approval, the fudge judge!
Aside from our regular bustling markets, it is a lovely annual event in Devizes because we get the kind of food stalls we rarely see here, serving the kind of grub we equally don’t get to taste often. Though many assume it’s the be-all and end-all of Devizes Food & Drink Festival, and to them I say you’ve only put a little toe into the water. It continues over the week, with a variety of ticketed food-related events, ones such as we highlighted in this year’s preview and can be found on our event calendar, and on their website HERE.
Each expert in their field joins the festival organisers for a range of events, with links to the subject of food. So, Hillworth Park has a teddy bear picnic, Devizes Fire Station serves a hot dish, The Wharf Theatre has a film night, screening The Hundred-Foot Journey, Helen Mirren and Om Puri’s battle over neighbouring French restaurants, and so on; even food critic Tom Parker-Bowles is coming to town, but you better get in quick as tickets are being snapped up for the separate events with many sold out already; I did pre-warn you!
This all ends Sunday 29th September with the World Food Day at the Corn Exchange; get there by midday to ensure you get tasters of the variety of world food dishes created by local residents of respective ethnic backgrounds. They come at just a quid a dish, so fill your boots!
Once the Market Place was tidied the Devizes Food & Drink Festival moved into the Town Hall for a ticketed Italian-inspired meal with Italian food-related readings, mostly from the Devizes Writers Group and sponsored by Devizes Books and the Healthy Life Company. It was all very posh, for me, but communal, welcoming and we enjoyed it.
Rest assured those wordsmiths will be analysing my amateurish writing, so I better get my grammar in gear! From contemporary literature to the Roman Empire, we were treated to passages from various sources, from Robert Harris’ Pompeii to Guardian articles about cheese. Most memorable was Lewis’ reading from Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome, about the prankster emperor Elagabalus who teased his guests with whoopie cushions and throwing drunkards into cells with toothless lions and tigers, and Roger, Devizes answer to Brain Blessed, boldly reciting Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar!
It was a great start to the festival, which continues throughout the week, you can even take your dogs to one event at Black Dog Coffee; zoinks! Scooby snacks!
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