REVIEW: Edinburgh Food Festival 2019

By Monika Hamzová, Soledad Chillarón and Adrien Panet

Street food atmosphere, award-winning international meal, marvellous drinks and chilling with friends, we couldn’t ask for more. Edinburgh Food Festival, for the sixth time, is on the stage from 19^th – 28^th July 2019 and offers a showcase of food and drinks from several producers selling their products in market stalls at Assembly George Square Gardens.

This was our first experience with the Edinburgh Food Festival because we are all international students from the Czech Republic, Spain and France enjoying the summer in Scotland.

The festival location was very easy to find as George Square Gardens are in the heart of the city and accessible to all.

When we arrived at the scene early afternoon, we felt that the festival hadn’t yet had the right spirit. Notwithstanding this, it seemed to be the good place for reading a book, chilling out or working out of office. After 6 PM the festival atmosphere had changed and the whole place became more crowded.

Once inside we could see many merchants and scent the gorgeous aroma of food from all sides. Sadly, the promising commercial variety of Scottish food has not been fulfilled. We were expecting more stalls offering traditional domestic meal because especially over the summer Edinburgh attracts a wide range of international visitors who are seeking a new culture experience.

Festival provides major selection of food from popular producers such as Jarvis Pickle, Mana Poke Bowls, Chick & Pea, Alanda’s Scottish Seafood Grill and Gelato, CookieDough, Neapolitan Street Food, vegan- and vegetarian-friendly food and many others. Beer made in well known Scottish breweries, Pickering’s Gin or Prosecco are also definitely worth mentioning.

Obviously, we weren’t able to sample all goodies, so we decided to try at least some of them. When we entered the festival, the first merchant offered an assortment of products and French specialties. The only problem was that there was a mistake in the name of the Food Truck, which was unacceptable for our French friend. The first meal we tried was a toast with avocado, feta cheese, pomegranate and chia seed made by Genius Truck. The first bite was delicious, really fruity and flavourful, the palatability was just perfect. We really appreciated the toasts’ offer because there will always be a choice of buying old-fashioned meal such as pizza or kebab. Even so, we bought two kinds of Italian pizza, one with mushrooms, its taste wasn’t really fascinating, and we could hardly see the ingredients, and one called Pizza Fritta, which unfortunately had no taste either. Still on the desire for Italian products, we tasted an ice cream that was just delicious. When you eat the banana ice cream with cinnamon biscuits you are in a food heaven.

Our next choice was an award-winning pie from Jarvis Pickle filled with chicken meat and vegetables served with potato mash. Jarvis Pickle pies are known for consisting of high-quality natural ingredients and we could confirm it. To taste something from Asian kitchen we went for fried veggie dumplings. In touch with soya sauce and sweet chilli it was a delightful snack. What food festival is complete without a healthy poke bowl? Lovers of poke bowls made by Mana Poké wouldn’t have been disappointed, they are using fresh ingredients and the taste is just delicious.

The stallholders were lovely and smiling all the time and despite the fact that some of the merchants still don’t accept credit cards and we were slightly missing music in the background, there are no doubts that we really like the idea to come back again. If you want to enjoy this moment and spend perfect time with friends in cozy surrounding, taste various food accompanied by a Scottish beer, the Edinburgh Food Festival is the right choice.