Brighton & Hove Food and Drink Festival

It's time to introduce another of our guest bloggers. This week I'm going to hand you over to Paula Seager from Natural PR so that she can give your her top tips of what to look out for during this year's Food and Drink Festival. But before we start here's a picture of Paula with some chickens:

Food lovers world-wide should take a look at this year’s programme of succulent events at the Brighton & Hove Food and Drink Festival 2009. It is a huge foodie community event, bringing together Sussex food and drink producers, restaurateurs, market traders, performing artists and just plain old good cooks in their homes ... believe it or not! This year’s festival will include for the first time an ‘Open House Dining’ event for foodies in the style of TV programme ‘Come Dine with Me’, with local people throwing open their doors to invite in paying guests to eat scrumptious dinners, serving up the best of Sussex produce.

Every single weekend of September, there will be a public foodie or drinkie event to tantalise the taste buds – most of them free! The first big one will be on Saturday 5th September – the Brighton Station Wine Festival – held under the arches at the top of Trafalgar Street. Look out for the bunting and outdoor tasting tables where experts from top vineyards will give guided pourings of some of the best wines from around the world from 11am.

The Taste of Sussex Weekend on 12th and 13th September along New Road and Jubilee Street will again be the central event of the festival, providing the largest Sussex food market in the county, this year enhanced with a new-style Live Food Show with top chefs’ demonstrations in Jubilee Square and a special Children’s Food Festival in the Royal Pavilion Gardens.

The next weekend will hold spicy treasures for the bold in Victoria Gardens with Fiery Food UK – a market and fun & games focused on the hottest chillies in the world. Festival-goers can also buy tickets for the Chocolate Trail offering six deliciously faultless chocolate-based experiences from six Brighton establishments that really do know how to ‘create’ with chocolate.

The Great Food Debate will this year focus on whether a city can feed itself and another exciting newcomer to the line up this year will be the ‘Big Brighton & Hove People’s Picnic’ running alongside the ‘Sussex and the World Food Market’ on Hove Lawns on the last weekend of the month – inviting families to bring their picnics and enjoy a huge get together by the sea.

The festival will also be promoting the Sussex Food & Drink Awards, celebrating the county’s wonderful producers, where the public’s vote counts at www.sussexfoodawards.com and supporting the Sussex Breakfast scheme, encouraging local restaurants and hotels to serve local produce.

The Festival has teamed up with City College Brighton & Hove’s catering department and restaurant to pay tribute to some of the best restaurants in the city, including Hotel du Vin, Terre a Terre and Oki Nami. It will also hold a special lunch for the city to honour the great food writer and extremely special local citizen, Marguerite Patten OBE. And there are a whole load of fringe foodie events to enjoy. To find out about the latest festival event details, see www.brightonfoodfestival.co.uk