Wrexham Food Festival 2012

Today Wrexham.com popped down to Llwyn Isaf – the grassy area outside the Guildhall by the Library – where Wrexham Food Festival had pitched their marquees.

Aballu were on hand with their chocolate goodies, perhaps the most interesting was the usual chocolate pizzas which come in their own little pizza boxes! Aballu are from Rossett and can be found on www.aballu.co.uk . ‘Blue’ had a stall showing their blueberry based sauces and other mixers, with the odd bit of tasting going on!

£3 for adults has likely raised a fair bit of money for Nightingale House

We were famished so hunted down our favoriate coffee people – ‘Just Tea and Coffee’ who are on the High St ( and online – www.justteaandcoffee.co.uk ) – and bought two coffees then wandered through the crowd outside where chairs and tables were placed surrounded by hot food producers. The choice ranged from Paella to traditional wooden stone based pizzas, but we opted for the traditional Wrexham fare of Zebra & Kangaroo burgers (!) from an Ostrich meat specialist!

Just to prove what was on the menu ! It tasted really good...

Bwtri were on hand giving information ( more on www.bwtri.com ) and sample menus of what they serve in the Wrexham Museum and Archives. The bacon bap for £1.70 is something we are going to try , 10am-11.30am . We also found out they do childrens parties there, with a ‘Mad Hatters Tea Party’, quiz trail and the like.

The sight of Violet Cupcake Couture’s cakes ( www.violetcupcakecouture.co.uk ) persuaded us to buy two each, which are current sat here to be eaten shortly. They looked beautifully fresh and we sneaked a taste of the icing on the way out which was delicious!

There was a steady flow of visitors all day.

We had samples of Rosies Cider ( www.rosiescider.co.uk ) from Llandegla, and their Pear Cider / Perry , but settled on their ‘Wicked Wasp’ medium cider and bought a litre! Another purchase was two lots of fudge from Fudge Box ( www.fudgebox.co.uk ) with the white chocolate and cranberry one being munched on while we write this! Yum.

Handmade and hand cut fudge!

Throughout the weekend there were live demonstrations with several chef’s giving people hints and tips in a small yet full equipped arena at the venue. We were told at the event that a couple of stall holders were surprised at the hit and miss manner of advertising the event, with some postering and promotion only taking place in the day or two before the festival rather than a longer term promotion. One told us of the banner on the Gresford Roundabout that had not been spotted by many as it was sat back from the road.

Doing our research online about the weekend we had noticed that the ‘WrexhamFoodFestival.co.uk’ domain name had expired and was no longer working, and a replacement ‘WrexhamFoodFest.co.uk’ domain had recently been registered to replace it with what appeared to be a lower grade website on it. This on the face of it might be a minor issue, however several websites were still linking in to the old site so for the sake of a £5 or £10 renewal an opportunity has been missed for whatever reason. Todays event was one run by Wrexham’s ‘Local Food First’ ( localfoodfirstwrexham.co.uk ) and Nightingale House Hospice ( nightingalehouse.co.uk ), so we are unsure who was responsible for what.

On the way out we popped past the Just Tea and Coffee stall, where we learnt that we might be seeing more locally supplied tea at our Wrexham.com HQ in The Foundry !

Its worth noting that Wrexham does have a rich and varied selection of local suppliers of food and drink – and you dont just have to wait until a food festival pops up to use them!