YORK'S popular food festival will be back in autumn with a new venue for pop-up restaurants and food demonstrations.
For the first time, the festival's demonstration stage will move to St Crux Hall with organisers boasting an extensive line-up of local chefs booked in to share their culinary tips.
The free-to-enter festival, which takes place annually in York city centre, attracts between 60,000 to 100,000 people to the city. This year, it will run from September 20 to 29.
A full programme of events and vendors will be published online at yorkfoodfestival.com in early August.
But here is a taste of some of the highlights to expect:
• Food and drink market: Selling fine cheese, charcuterie, and smoked goods, as well as produce from local distilleries, and also pies, jams, confectionary, and much more. The market will incorporate a special stand featuring Burundian produce to celebrate York’s twin town Dijon.
• Street food and drink and live music: Two live music venues will be playing from 5pm to 9 pm with proceeds going to the local hospice, St Leonard’s. Festival bars will feature drinks from York Gin and Brew York, plus local ciders and wine from York wine bar Pairings. Expect around 40 street food vendors embracing food from around the world.
• Beer festival: The local CAMRA Beer Festival will run over the opening two days September 20 to 21.
• Healthy eating community programme: There will be1000 places in hands-on cookery workshops for York primary schools with additional places for youth organisations.
• Second York Health Mela on the September 22.
• Community stand in the market with guest slots for Edible York, Abundance York, Trussell Trust, and the York Schools Health Minds initiative.
• Local best home cook competition.
• Ready, steady cook! Both residents and visitors will have the opportunity to try their hand at making bread and pasta, smoking their own food, and making butter, vegan dips, and ice cream.
Organisers are also expanding the popular food trail.
They said: "A key feature is the walking tour of shops and restaurants offering a small sample in up to 20 stops.
"Due to high demand and limited capacity, this event is always oversubscribed on weekends.
"In 2024, there will be an additional 10-stop, double-sample tour manned by the festival at pop-up stops across the city to accommodate the extra demand on Saturdays."
The York Food Festival - also known as the York Festival of Food and Drink - first began in 1997 and was quite a different beast, with the focus on attracting celebrity chefs to York.
Today, say organisers, the festival is more about celebrating local and independent businesses and producers.
Festival director Michael Hjort has said that York's food scene had changed dramatically over the years since the festival began.
“When we first opened, there was no craft bakery in York, nobody made bread in the city centre and there were no ice-cream parlours.”
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