Another Successful Thame Food Festival
On the last Saturday of September over 25,000 people were welcomed into a quaint market town in the county of Oxfordshire for the eighth annual Thame Food Festival. With a long line-up of celebrity chefs, hundreds of high quality local producers, pop-up restaurants and a baking competition, the atmosphere in Lotte Duncan’s words was “simply stunning”. There was only one thing that was hard to believe – that it was all free!
As a festival run by the community, for the community, everyone from Richard Bertinet to Lucie Greenwood and Frances Quinn volunteered their time. This seemed to make their chef demonstrations even sweeter. Every foodie, producer and professional chef passionately shared their knowledge of food and drink with each other and I felt then, that there was something special about Thame Food Festival. As always, we watched in awe as Raymond Blanc and his team from Le Manoir Quat’saisons created some mouth-watering dishes before our eyes and any Great British Bake Off fan would have been overwhelmed by the presence of past contestants, Natalie Coleman, Luis Troyano, Miranda Gore-Browne, Frances Quinn and Howard Middleton too.
Building on the rising popularity of GBBO and cake making in the UK, the first ever Big Thame Bake took place and a whopping 120 people carefully crafted and entered in their creations. However, there was a clear winner when the most wonderful strawberry almond tartlets were spotted amongst the displays, and Vibeke Jepsen was deemed the baking queen, taking her crown home to Maidenhead.
What contributed most to the amazing buzz of the festival were the 207 producers from around the Oxfordshire region who lined the streets of Thame – more traders than ever before. Their food, drinks and gifts were so popular that many stallholders reported completely selling out! Pop-up restaurant Belazu also spoilt visitors with a magical Mediterranean feast, there were no seats left free at their dinner tables.
The Thame Food Festival is the largest free gastronomic event of its kind in the UK, and those who attended will appreciate how impressive an accolade this is for a festival of such quality. If you didn’t make it this year, you’ll sadly have to wait to 2016 before you experience the event for yourself – and no doubt agree with its impressive reputation.
