St Ives Food And Drink Festival 2011 Announces Highlights
A week- long festival to tickle the tastebuds and wow visitors runs from 16th to 22nd May in St Ives, with events taking place throughout the picturesque Cornish town.
Events kick off on Monday, May 16th with an evening of music, poetry art and wine at Scarlet Wines in Lelant and build as the week progresses with food and drink tastings, special menus, food foraging, guided history walks and a South African wine and Gin tasting extravaganza.
“St Ives is among many Cornish towns and villages leading the way in creating inspiring menus prepared by truly passionate chefs with quality, locally sourced ingredients. Where better to sample the tremendous array of some of the freshest seafood available in the county than during the St Ives Food and Drink Festival” comments Malcolm Bell, Head of Tourism at VisitCornwall, the Cornwall Development Company tourism service. “Cornwall is rightfully becoming a talked about culinary destination”.
The focus of the weekend then turns to the food and drink producers event – which this year takes place on the town’s West Pier, with the popular cooking demonstrations next to fish filleting demonstrations from the town’s Fisherman’s Association, face painting, live music performances, and a sand castle building competition on the harbour beach.
“The goal with this year’s Food and Drink Festival is to build on the success of last year and make it bigger and better with more events during the week for people to enjoy.” said one of the event organisers Graham Buckley of Mercury PR. “We have the perfect backdrop in St Ives and feel with the different locations and increasing range of events taking place during the week and over the weekend, the Festival will offer visitors even more,” he added.
The festival showcases some of the very best of Cornish produce and will include names such as Rodda’s cream, Cornish Sea Salt, I Should Coco, Polgoon Vineyard, Keltek Brewery, Cornish Orchards and Isla Negra Wines, in addition to St Ives Beef, Worthy Cheddar, Sea Food Café and Cornish Smoakies to name but a few.
The weekend cookery demonstrations will be situated right on the beach itself overlooking the picturesque harbour. Lee Wilson, Chef from the Porthminster Beach Café, will be cooking some of his signature dishes . The Café has just won the Taste of England Category at the Enjoy England Tourism Excellence Awards, making it the ‘best restaurant in England’. The chef line up also includes Lee Groves, from Seagrass, semi finalist in the 2010 BBC Masterchef – The Professionals, along with leading chefs from some of the top hotels and restaurants in St Ives.
For full programme information for the festival visit www.stivesfoodanddrinkfestival.co.uk and follow us on our facebook page – St Ives Food and Drink Festival.
