Picnic and barbecue twist for ‘Year of the Outdoors’ food challenge!

Eateries across Wrexham are being invited put forward their best barbecue or picnic dishes for a brand new food challenge.

The North East Wales Tourism Team is once again launching its annual culinary contest to celebrate the start of the Welsh Year of the outdoors.

In a new approach to the competition, the 2020 challenge will see restaurants and cafés, coffee shops or tearooms take part in some friendly competition to showcase the best local produce within North East Wales.

For restaurants, the challenge will be to develop a bbq / grill dish that showcases local North East Wales producers, with the dish playing on the senses and help diners learn more about the 2020 Year of the Outdoors in Wales.

For cafes / coffee shops & tearooms, the challenge is slightly different and encourages the design of a eat in or takeaway picnic, which again uses as much local North East Wales produce as possible. The dish must also incorporates the promotion of a local walk to get visitors out & about in our area, whilst enjoying their picnic at the same time.

Taking place between 6th -27th March, eateries across the region will have their entry available each day (during normal hours) whilst they also will receive two mystery dining visits that will score their entry, how it is promoted and how it matches the entry criteria.

The three highest scoring bbq / grill dishes will then be invited to a cook-off at the start of April with prizes including the associated publicity, plus a live cooking demo at a local Food & Drink Festival later this year – whilst the cafes with the most intriguing picnic / walk combinations will have the ingredients and walks published in some North East Wales literature ahead of the busy summer period.

Speaking about the event, Sam Regan, chair of the This Is Wrexham Tourism Partnership said: “With the Visit Wales Year of Outdoors launching last month, it’s great to see our tourism partners from North East Wales running another food competition which is always well received – and crucially fosters new relationships between producers and ourselves in the restaurant trade.

“The two new competitions offer a chance for both restaurants and café / tearooms to compete on an even platform whilst creating a new product for visitors to this region.”

How to enter

If you are a chef or run a local eatery within Wrexham, Flintshire or Denbighshire and wish to take on the challenge, you’ll need to forward details of your dish to [email protected] by 9.00am on 28th February.

This should include the name of the dish, details of all suppliers to be used and any other details you think
will make your dish stand out. As entries are limited per category, if the category is oversubscribed, you’ll be notified if you’re successful the next day, after which businesses involved will need to attend a short briefing event on 3rd March.

Details of all dishes entered into the challenge will be published on 5th March and be available to view at www.northeastwales.wales and on the @NthEastWales tourism social media channels on the same date.