Property news: Dining partners
Latest supports the Brighton and Hove Food and Drink Festival
The Brighton and Hove Food and Drink Festival is now in its 11th year and going from strength to strength. From modest beginnings the event now takes place twice a year with both a spring and autumn harvest celebration of what is great about local produce.
From the early days of the festival Latest Media group have been strong supporters and media partners to the festival, giving wide coverage of all the events in Latest 7. In addition to this Latest’s Andrew Kay has become a regular figure at many of those events. He hosts the festival’s Live Food stage for two days each festival and once again this spring that stage is sponsored by Discover The Origin, a European organisation set up to promote Parma ham, Parmesan cheese and the wines of the Douro Valley.
“Having Discover The Origin as a major sponsor has greatly enhanced the quality of the Live Food Show,” says Latest’s Creative Director and food critic Andrew Kay, “Since they came on board we have been able to improve the event massively and even introduce the Chef’s 5 Minute Challenge where the exhibiting chefs work against the clock to produce a smart dish from my limited kicthen cupboard but using the great ham, cheese and wine that our sponsors provide.
“This Easter I will also be hosting Make Your Case at Pub du Vin, our punk wine tasting evening that sells out, and Bitter And Twisted, an evening of great ales and pub grub, again at Pub du Vin in Ship Street. We ran Bitter And Twisted two years ago and it was a wildly succesful if slightly inebriated evening of fun. I also use both events to try and raise some money for the festival’s chose charity the Rockinghorse appeal. At Make your case last September, after a saucy aside from one lady, I managed to extract over £400 from the audience who were willing to pay to see one wine merchant strip to the waist.
Latest Homes and Latest 7 have always had a strong link to Brighton and Hove’s burgeoning restaurant scene and critic Andrew Kay has been writing his food column for 17 years. “By engaging with the food festival we have bult strong links with so many Brighton food businesses. But our most exciting project so far has been International Chef Exchange, a cross channel food event that helped the festival to win a Sussex Business Award in 2011. I have now filmed that event and it is currently being edited in preparation for the launch of Latest TV Brighton later this year. It’s a fun programme packed with great gourmet foods, wines and all the tension of two brilliant kitchens when the chefs change places in Brighton and Maastricht.”
Andrew Kay is now a director of the food festival further cementing the bond between Latest and this hugely succesful twice yearly event.
Brighton and Hove Food and Drink Festival Spring Harvest, Thursday 28 March–Wednesday 3 April 2013. See also Latest 7, p17.
www.brightonfoodfestival.com
