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!
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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Abrilli, sole Director and owner of Tonka Bean Cafe Bar in Devizes announced today, due to “significant changes in personal and financial circumstances due to unfortunately slow and inconsistent trade over the past few months,” the cafe is to close….
Tonka Bean will cease trading and close its doors on Sunday 26th May 2024. Abrilli thanked her customers and supporters, and said, “I have loved every minute of bringing my Caribbean flavour and vibes to Devizes, our second home, and who knows maybe now was just not the right time.”
Just a month short of a year ago I dropped in to see Abrilli’s newly opened Tonka Bean, and publishing the news was one of our highest hitting articles of 2023. There was an air of optimism in the meeting, the idea of bringing Devizes something unique, and huge support for the cafe-bar was felt. It is very sad to hear it will go, I guess in this current economic climate this is a gloomy sign of the times.
Abrilli invites all to join them over the next fortnight, for great coffee and drinks, as they clear their stock. Regular opening hours apply. We wish her and the staff at Tonka Bean all the best for the future.
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The sun certainly shone on Devizes yesterday as the Devizes Food & Drink Festival kicked off with its celebrated free foodie market in, aptly, the Market Place……
You should take note it’s not the be-all-and-end-all of the festival, only the starter. The Devizes Food & Drinks Festival combines twenty-four separate events over nine days, ending on 1st October. There’s a packed programme from a teddy bear’s picnic at Hillworth Park to Saxon Forager Craig Brooks introducing Viking and Anglo Saxon age cuisine, but for many, the market is the icing on the cake.
The finale is also popular, a free World Food Day, where for a 50p taster you can explore worldwide cuisines created by local residents with their roots from various countries. This takes place at the Corn Exchange on Sunday 1st October from 12:30.
Now, not wanting to criticise the amazing efforts and hard work which goes into the event, as it is fantastic to wander the square and smell the lovely food being prepared, browse some great local produce stalls, and enjoy taking a break at the Wadworth bar with some live music, but I confess, nothing particularly lurched out at me demanding me to eat it! Perhaps I’ve become accustomed to the annual affair, or perhaps I was in a grump, but in previous years there were a selection of interestingly different stalls, of Baos, street ravioli, or a grill selling burgers of kangaroo, ostrich, crocodile and various other unusual slices of dead animal, which sadly seems to lessen with each year that passes.
I tip my hat to the Rutts Lane Cider stall, The Goat Farmer, and the Cosy Gyros also in attendance, and salute there’s many welcomed returning participants, from Tray Cake to that strange silver van which although the cooking is hidden from view, does magically produce a tasty burger. There was a Japanese noodle stall, paella and churros, but these are all things we’ve seen at previous year’s markets, or else other town events.
The only one to sell it to me was a Caribbean preserves stall selling banana jam, which surprised me, otherwise I shrug at food stuff I can buy from regular places in town already and cheaper too. This conclusion ended with me fulfilling my promise to bring something home for the family, but popping over to Savannah Sweets in the Shambles, to bag a gurt lush variety of goodies for a similar price to three negligible packets of fudge on one of the stalls. Now I know it costs to independently create and market your own produce, and I’m even willing to accept the fudge on the stall might’ve tasted superior, but in this economic car-crash era, there has to unfortunately be a budget. Dammit if even a hotdog would set me back seven quid; am I at Wembley?!
I reflected on this samey feel last year, considered virtually copying and pasting the article and changing the dates, but I kept it positive, as I really want to convey a positive review as much as possible, and for what it was, especially if you’ve not been to a previous year’s before, as I said, it is great, don’t wish to sound like I’m taking it for granted, just think some creative input and souring of something usual and new is an angle fading annually.
In last year’s report I said, “if last year I winged “Frome’s eclectic-influenced folk four-piece, The Decades made for the perfect entertainment, but again, they were the same band which played there in 2019,” they were there again this time too,” they were even there again this time! The Decades are great, and apt for the occasion, but working an entire day is hard on them, and they regularly need to take breaks, where the Market Place is left void of entertainment. I know and accept the focus is on food and drink, being the Food & Drink Festival and all, but offering some different musical acts would be an easy change to make.
I also bore witness to bored kids being dragged unwillingly around. Once they’ve had an ice cream, erm; perhaps workshop tables could be introduced, build your own pizza, decorate a gingerbread man, or dare I suggest a Bugsy Malone fashioned custard pie fight? That’d certainly liven it up a bit!
Grumpus Maximus rant over, concubines can spoon feed me grapes and fan me down, and I will say, The Devizes Food & Drink Festival market will always be a regular must-do on our event calendar, is always worthwhile attending, though I believe some further thought is needed to prevent it becoming monotonous to regular annual attendees.
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Renowned local vintner Casper Bowes will be on hand with entertaining insights and helpful hints to guide guests through a selection of wines guaranteed to add sparkle to the Christmas celebrations.
The masterclass will provide the opportunity to sample a range of wines from around the world in the unique historic setting of the Grade 1 listed building in New Park Street.
Co-founders of Bowes Wine, Casper and Victoria, who describe themselves as a ‘healthily wine-obsessed husband and wife team’, started the business in 2002 and focus on sourcing new and exciting wines from both the classic and lesser known regions of the world, with both young and older vintages in their sights.
The tasting, which starts at 6.30pm, aims to enable those imbibing to get a better understanding and appreciation of a wide range of specially selected wines. The evening will finish with a glass of bubbly and light refreshments.
Tickets, which cost £25, can be purchased from Ticketsource and Devizes Books – visit www.stmarydevizestrust.org.uk for further details and to learn more about the plans to transform the building into a vibrant community arts venue for future generations.
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