Malton’s most ambitious Food Lovers Festival to date attracted a record breaking 20,000 visitors to the market town, newly crowned ‘county’s culinary capital’ by star Patron Antonio Carluccio.
The much loved Italian cook delighted the crowds with his relaxed cookery demonstrations and appearances in the Market Place where he chatted happily with Festival visitors and delighted stallholders who enjoyed record trade over the weekend.
Festival organiser, Tom Naylor Leyland said: “The amount of people coming to the Festival was been overwhelming. We were determined to put on a food event this year to rival the best in the country and people came in their droves to enjoy the atmosphere, food, drinks and our Finest foodie stars.”
Capacity audiences filled the two cookery theatres on both days to see cookery demonstration by Antonio Carluccio, Rosemary Shrager, Tom Parker Bowles and Matthew Fort, Andrew Pern, James Mackenzie and another 12 of our prestigious Yorkshire chefs. A Masterclass Marquee – a first for this year - hosted a series of talks and interviews featuring specialist producers, growers and chefs and proved extremely popular. It was standing room only to hear Festival President Selina Scott in conversation with Antonio Carluccio, Tom Parker Bowles, with his new pre publication book, Matthew Fort, Rosemary Shrager and Andrew Pern. Hoppers, the local book store ran out of The Two Greedy Italians Eat Italy cook books by Antonio, selling well over 100 copies.
Many of the 90-plus producers sold out of their wonderful locally grown produce because of the tremendous interest from visitors, with quite a few declaring Malton “is now THE Festival “and “is unrivalled now in Yorkshire”.
The Beer, Wine and Cider Festival was also hugely popular and extremely busy right from opening time, with the 40 Yorkshire beers proving overwhelmingly popular during the whole weekend. The 12 hours of live music also added greatly to the carnival atmosphere and enjoyed by all the families that came to experience Malton en fete.
The Yorkshire Regiment delighted the crowd with the first appearance of tit militarily band with many of the chefs in the adjacent Cookery Theatre incorporated its music into their routine. Their tank as always proved overwhelmingly popular with children and quite a few Dads.
The Festival crowd will also now know that the town has much to offer in the way of excellent shops of all kinds, first class food and restaurants, and events all year round.