Manchester Eats Food Festival: Review

Yesterday I visited a food festival for the first time, the Manchester Eats food festival in Heaton Park which is very close to where I live so I had to go especially as Heaton Park is such a beautiful park. Yesterday was such a boiling hot day, perfect food festival weather! I was kindly added to the guest list for the food festival which is one of the few times I've been on an event guest list and it doesn't feel any less special! Annoyingly I completely forgot to take my DSLR so I had to use my iPhone 7; you can see some of my Instagram Stories for more!

The festival started yesterday and featured chocolate workshops, cooking demonstrations with celebrity chefs including the famous (and super lovely) Marco Pierre as well as numerous stalls from a range of Mancunian and international brands such as Hotel Chocolat, Costco and more. The festival also had a large kids village including fair ground rides and childrens workshops.

We arrived a little late yesterday but thankfully we were able to see some of Marco Pierre White's first cooking demonstration which was of a delicious sounding mushroom risotto. I haven't seen any celebrity chefs before so it was very exciting especially as Marco Pierre White is such a famous and accomplished chef. He seems so lovely, down to earth and funny which definitely came across in the demonstration.

The chefs tent wasn't as large as I thought it would be so there were limited seats and for me personally, I think it would be have been better value for money if the celebrity demonstrations and events were closer together. Additionally, when we arrived at the car park, there were no signs indicating which direction the festival was, we just had to follow the noise without knowing if we wee heading in the direction of the entrance.

There were various stalls that catered for a wide range of interests and tastes such as a vegan/vegetarian area, craft beer stalls, Hotel Chocolat mobile van, greek food, Thai pies, cookies and ice cream stalls and stalls dedicated to just garlic produce...yes! We only bought a couple of items at the festival including some delicious samosas from an Indian food stall (I can't remember the name) and natural salt from The Dorset Sea Salt Co. As well as food, snacks and alcohol, there were produce stalls with pre-made condiments and cooking ingredients.

A few friends were interested in going on the Sunday, today, and thought that there would be lots of food samples but from my experience, there weren't but there were some. The prices differ per stall but the food prices overall were reasonable. We had a sample of the ice cream buns from Milky Stax and it was incredibly delicious!

Overall, for my first food festival experience, I was very excited and it definitely met my expectations on the whole; the celebrity cooking demonstrations were definitely my favourite aspects of the food festival. The only negatives for me personally was the lack of sign posting at the car parks, the wait between demos and the slight lack of seating - as it was such a hot day I think covered seating would have been useful. I definitely want to visit more food festivals now and there's one in Liverpool on the 15th and 16th September that I'll be looking out for so if you missed the Manchester Eats food festival you don't have to long wait until the next one.

Have you been to a food festival? Did you visit the Manchester Eats mood festival yesterday or today?