Butchers, bakers and cocktail makers

Food festivals showcase mouth-watering produce, cooking demos and celebrity chefs, as Jonathan Manning discovered in Abergavenny

Jonathan treats himself to a tasty burger

Britain has become a nation of food obsessives. The bestseller charts are full of cookery books, chefs are so famous they are recognisable by their first names – Delia, Jamie, Gordon – and as soon as MasterChef finishes its epic run of 24 episodes, it’s time to switch channels and watch Paul and Prue judge soggy bottoms.

But food isn’t just a spectator sport. The number of gourmet festivals in the UK is mushrooming, and whether you’re vegan, vegetarian or carnivore, or your palate’s sweet-toothed or spicy, there’s an event to whet your appetite. These gatherings offer seemingly endless opportunities to sample, savour, munch and crunch a feast of flavours.

From the Kent coast to the Brecon Beacons and the banks of Loch Lomond, food festivals celebrate the best of local ingredients and international cuisine. And with their chef demonstrations and talks, they offer far more than the monthly farmers’ markets that pop up along high streets. They’re a chance to pick up tips, taste the exotic and fill your bags with produce that you’d never find in a supermarket. And when afternoon turns to evening, there’s often music and dancing, fuelled by local brewers, distillers and street food stands.

All of which brings me to Abergavenny in Monmouthshire in September, along with an estimated 20,000 other people, for one of the most popular weekend food festivals on the calendar. Alongside the butchers, bakers and cocktail makers are 190 stalls selling everything from meads to curries. Celebrity chefs and restaurant critics rub shoulders with food entrepreneurs, wine experts and more.

The festival presents food as a story and social experience, as much as sustenance. There are moving accounts of how food reconnects people to different lands, food that helped with mental health, and food that’s kinder to the environment – all we are saying is ‘Give (chick) peas a chance!’

The early visitor gets the samples, and I enjoy an eclectic breakfast as I peruse the stalls: artisanal chorizo, dark chocolate, Cornish peanut butter, bread slathered in olive oil, and chocolate brownie, all washed down with a thimble of Welsh whisky and a delicious sip of mead, made in the traditional way from fermented honey. It all makes for an unorthodox, yet mouthwatering, start to the day, before I take out my wallet and buy an enormous cinnamon bun and a very fine coffee.

Produce on almost every stall is decorated with the Great Taste Award logo, a sure-fire indication of drool-inducing loveliness, albeit with fairly tasty prices. Magnificent-looking wheels of Caws Teifi Caerphilly cheese cost four times per kilo what I would normally pay for Cheddar in a supermarket; £7.25 Coedcanlas marmalades are presented in jars fit for high-end cosmetics; and £7 bars of Mayhawk chocolate are stacked in boxes that look more like works of art than packages.

Artisan food is expensive to produce. These aren’t high-volume goods manufactured by huge companies making a few pennies’ profit per unit – they’re very carefully crafted specialities. The Caerphilly cheese, for example, is made with locally sourced, organic, raw (unpasteurised) milk that’s rich in good bacteria, while the Mayhawk chocolate comes in a range of fascinating flavours, including basil, tomato and black olive. 

There’s extraordinary variety, too, at the street food stalls outside, where dining options range from Nigerian stew to Taiwanese steamed bao buns, soft-shell crab, paella, pulled pork, beef and lamb, and pizza. I opt for a Beefy Boys burger. It may cost £11.50 but it is the most delicious burger I can remember eating – an indulgent combination of juicy patty, sharp gherkin, American cheese, ketchup and mustard. I look like a toddler eating spag bol for the first time as the juices drip down my chin.

Show and tell

Meera Sodha on the Market Hall Stage at Abergavenny Food Festival

Between the samples, the feasting and the shopping, there are exhilarating talks and demonstrations. Dina Macki talks about her Omani and Zanzibari heritage, while

making a Scotch egg using lamb and the herbs and spices from those regions. Guardian columnist Meera Sodha explains the science between steaming and frying food as she rustles up an intriguing dish of aubergine, celery, red peanuts and chilli, before sharing how the power of cooking helped to restore

her mental health during a difficult time. “Cooking dinner every day made me feel grounded and gave me a sense of achievement,” she tells the audience.

Sustainability is a powerful and consistent theme throughout the festival. Luxury ready meals guru Charlie Bigham, for example, reveals that the wooden food trays in which his food is served are made from a sustainable poplar forest in France, the fast-growing timber being low in resin and therefore suitable for food. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, meanwhile, is a long-time advocate of sustainability. The BAFTA-winning broadcaster has a host of anecdotes about his life in the countryside, including one about a lizard that he took to school in a Tupperware box, but underlying it all is a profound respect for nature and seasonal produce.

While the bigger names draw bigger crowds, I also pick up useful tips at the smaller stages, especially the ‘Cooking over Fire’ feature in the grounds of Abergavenny Castle. Sam and Shauna, stars of the BBC’s Sam and Shauna’s Big Cook-Out, recommend immersing meat and chicken in a 2% salt brine solution for 24 hours to keep it moist before cooking over flames, and emphasise the importance of using good wood or charcoal (“Not petrol station or DIY store stuff”) to avoid chemicals tainting flavours. As a food festival novice, I’m slow to catch on that Sam will serve up the three giant tomahawk pork steaks she’s grilling, alongside an apple and blackberry jus, and butterbean and kale side, so find myself at the back of the queue and empty-handed when the samples are shared.

But I’m a quick learner and in pole position to try the epic sandwich conjured up by Max Halley, of Max’s Sandwich Shop in north London, and a regular on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch. Max is hugely entertaining, insisting that ‘sandwich’ is a verb (“Sorry Scandinavians, but that’s just stuff on bread!”), and describing how the perfect sarnie is “an orchestra of ingredients all singing together – sweet and sour, hot and cold, soft and crunchy”. The secret to a good sandwich is a liberal attitude to mayonnaise, he adds, squeezing the contents of a large bottle into a tuna, onion, oregano and olive oil mix that he then smothers onto a toasted ciabatta, before filling the sandwich with hot, barbecued pork, slices of beef tomato and crushed crisps for a crunchy bite. It’s a sublime mouthful from a fabulous festival.

Information

The 2025 Abergavenny Food Festival is being held on 20-21 September 2025).

Contact: abergavennyfood festival.com

Club campsites: Pandy; Tredegar House Country Park

Crowds inside the Abergavenny Food Festival’s Market Hall. Photo © Credit Tim Woodier: Abergavenny Food Festival

Three more food festivals to look forward to across the UK

• Big Feastival, Oxfordshire
  Mouth-watering produce mixes with great music on the Cotswolds farm owned by Alex James of Blur fame (22-24 August 2025).
  Info: thebigfeastival.com
  Stay: Moreton-in-Marsh Club Campsite
  
  
• Broadstairs Food Festival, Kent
  Spend the Easter weekend (18-20 April 2025) at this free festival that celebrates the local area’s food and drink producers.
  Info: broadstairsfoodfestival.org.uk
  Stay: Black Horse Farm Club Campsite
  
  
• Shrewsbury Food Festival, Shropshire
  A two-day showcase of fine local food and drink, with chef talks and demonstrations plus live music (28-29 June 2025).
  Info: shrewsburyfoodfestival.co.uk
  Stay: Love2Stay AS, Lady Margaret’s Park Club Campsite