This weekend anybody with the slightest interest in tempting tastes will be in Topsham for two great events.
Saturday, July 12, will see a celebration of Slow Food Devon with a local food market held on the Quay throughout the day and live music and street food through the evening.
From 10am until 2pm, there will be the opportunity to sample and buy artisan food and drink from some of the county's top producers including Pipers Farm, Good Game, Quickes Cheese, Pyman Paté, Blueberry Bros, Shute Fruit, Ark Chicken, Green Valley Cyder, Devon Coffee and more.
The Slow Food Devon Food Market is a celebration of the wide choice of local produce available on our doorsteps. Each producer featured in the market shares the principle of growing 'proper' food, slowly and in harmony with nature, food that is "good, clean and fair" – the vision set out by Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini in 1986.
Steve Williams from Good Game, Topsham-based charcuterie experts, said: "There are some really interesting producers here. I have tasted food from all of them and it is excellent. No wonder our region is celebrated as being one of the best for food and drink with fantastic farmers, growers and makers like these.
"It's a real community event, with Stuart from the Lighter Inn, Liz of Route 2 Café and Marc Millon from Slow Food Devon, working together to get this event off the ground, we are in for a real treat."
Throughout the day there will be a demonstration kitchen provided by In Toto Kitchens set up on Topsham Quay, providing a platform for local talented chefs to showcase their culinary skills, including Tom Williams-Hawkes from the Salutation Inn, Doug Pestell from Petite Maison, James Clark of the Travelling Cookery School and others.
From 5pm the Quay will turn into a street food celebration, with stalls full of exotic and interesting hot food and local drinks. Guests will also be treated to great live music organised by Lighter Inn, featuring an assortment of blues, jazz, folk, funk, reggae and soul and including local blues musician Alex Kumar, Devon favourites The Jax, and Bristol-based headliners Ltd Edition.
Marc Millon, co-organiser of the Topsham Food Festival and a long-standing supporter of Slow Food, said they were delighted to hold the Slow Food Devon Topsham Market and to have such great support from local producers.
"The market provides a fabulous opportunity to meet people who work tirelessly to create such excellent local foods and who follow Slow Food's underlying ethos that food should be 'good, clean and fair'," he added. "The market will be a brilliant opportunity to taste and gather provisions for the next day's Nello's Longest Table festivities."
Nello's Longest Table event will take place on the Sunday. It will see 2,500 people sitting down together at a table stretching through the streets of Topsham. This evening celebration of food and friends is held each year in memory of Nello Ghezzo, a popular restaurant owner in Topsham and who died from cancer in 1999. Most of this year's places have already been sold.
