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The Bidwells Norwich & Norfolk Food Festival 2008
8th - 14th October


After a packed programme of gastronomic activities, the Bidwells Norwich and Norfolk Food Festival came to a rousing end on Tueday 14th October with a record-breaking Moveable Feast in the heart of the city.

Over 300 fun foodie events were held during the week, which saw 145 Norfolk businesses taking part. Restaurants from across Norwich and Norfolk served up special menus and dishes featuring wonderful Norfolk produce. Local producers sold out during the RNAA Local Producres Fair in The Forum, and the local produce stalls and cookery demonstrations at the Food & Ale Fringe event at Earlham Shopping Centre attracted large crowds and over 40 home bakers took part in the scone competition at Wroxham Barns.

New for this year, and launching the festival, The Great Norfolk Food Debate, saw a panel of food experts and a large audience at the John Innes Centre engage in a Question-Time style debate exploring the big food issues of the day - from curly carrots and GM spuds to the clout of supermarkets and the challenge of persuading young people to eat healthily and sensibly.
The panel included Dr David Pencheon, a public health doctor and director for the NHS Sustainability Unit; Professor Chris Lamb, director of the John Innes Institute; Emma Marsden, cookery editor of Good Housekeeping; Chris Coubrough, one of Norfolk’s celebrity chefs; John Shropshire, CEO of G’s marketing, and major salad and vegetable grower; and Sam Nundy, East of England buyer from Tesco.

As always, the highly popular Battle of the Bangers Competition was a huge success, with around 4000 members of the public casting their votes for their favourite sausage-maker. Anthony Spurgeon, of Frank Spurgeon Limited was finally declared reigning champion, winning both the judges’ vote and the majority public vote.

The Moveable Feast was a huge success, with just under 700 tickets sold, making for the biggest ever audience of dinner guests for this much loved food extravaganza. A total of 18 restaurants took part and the city was full of happy groups of diners as they made their way between different city centre restaurants for their starter, main and dessert, coming together at the end for an After Feast Party at the Forum.

If you are a business in Norfolk there are countless ways in which you can participate and we welcome anyone who wishes to try something a little different, in fact we challenge you! You can make your participation as big or as small as you like, you can have a target market in mind or go for gold. We are already thinking about next year's Festival and if you would like to join in to showcase your product to a large audience that really care about food, contact clare.packer@visitnorwich.co.uk or call Clare on 01603 727979.

Have a look at our photo gallery below to see some of the fun of the Festival!
Food Festival foodies

Food Festival foodies

Food Festival foodies

Food Festival foodies

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