Foodie Heaven at the Dartmouth Food Festival 2017
If you’re looking for an excuse to escape to Devon this October half term, the Dartmouth Food Festival is reason enough. Now in its 15th year, this annual celebration of the best food and drink in the South West attracts over 20,000 visitors over 3 days, and is a delicious way to kick-start half term.
Set in the beautiful estuary town of Dartmouth in the South Hams, from Friday 20th to Sunday 22nd October, this unmissable ‘feast for the senses’ will feature a tempting mix of exquisite regional food and drink stalls, celebrity chef demonstrations, workshops, seminars, tastings, competitions and fun for all the family.
Described in The Telegraph as a ‘heady mix of celebrity chefs, parties, food markets, tasting shacks and demonstrations’, the Dartmouth Food Festival is now a landmark event on the culinary calendar, made even sweeter because it is completely FREE to enter.
The Festival welcomes many special guests, from internationally renowned chefs to celebrated writers and critics, to provide a huge range of exciting, informative food-related entertainment. Led by Festival advocate and award-winning chef and restaurateur Mitch Tonks, it’s set to be brimming with local and national food heroes sharing their foodie passion and inspiration.
However the main aim of the festival is to showcase the best food and drink producers to originate from the South West – from Ashridge Cider and Cornish Seasalt through to the Good Game and South Devon Chilli Farm, as well as award-winning local restaurants and their amazing chefs.
As the Festival takes place on the banks of the River Dart, which flows into one of the busiest waterways in the world, the Dartmouth Food Festival is now playing its part in tackling the growing environmental crisis of ocean plastic. 2017 sees the introduction of efforts to reduce single-use plastic, moving towards compostable cutlery, cups, plates and packaging instead. They’ll also be encouraging visitors to be greener by offering free water refills for their reusable water bottles throughout the town.
If you can be in Devon at the end of September too, the Food festival is also hosting a screening of the film that has been described by Sir David Attenborough as the most important film of our time, A Plastic Ocean, at the Flavel in Dartmouth on Thursday 28th September 2017 from 7pm. Book your tickets here.
With an abundance of locally-produced, high quality ingredients and a growing reputation for world-class food, the Dartmouth Food Festival is the perfect setting for an October break.
A holiday cottage in Dartmouth is the ideal base for making the most of everything the Festival has to offer.