FOODIES FESTIVAL - EDINBURGH

Now me being me, I have all the good intentions in the world but maybe am not always on the ball. (Not as much as I would like to be). In saying that I went somewhere amazing at the beginning of August for my birthday and then completely forgot to do a post talking about it all. That being said, here is my experience at the Foodies Festival held every year in cities across the UK.

Now this festival if you don't know, is somewhere for food and drink lovers to come and destroy themselves for the day. I had been so looking forward to this event as I love all kinds of food and just the atmosphere of being somewhere like this is great. In Edinburgh the festival takes place in Inverleith Park just opposite the Royal Botanic Gardens. This is a great park and easy to get to, with lots of street parking around the area.

We bought our tickets in advance to avoid any queues that might have emerged and sure enough, there was the queue to get in to the event and the queue before that to buy your tickets. So if you go to this event, I would recommend paying for your ticket beforehand just to save yourself some time. After getting in to the festival, you are free to wander the stalls. A lot of the stalls at the bottom half were different drinks and a stage for different performers through out the day. It was so sunny in the morning and everyone just wanted to buy a drink and chill to the music.

If just chilling isn't your thing, then through out the day there are different work shops for kids and cooking/baking/drinks demonstrations that you can attend. Word of advice though is if you're going to the event for these demonstrations, arrive when it opens. We arrived a little after eleven (just an hour after opening) and they had already filled all the spaces of demonstrations until two in the afternoon. We went back at two to ensure we got to see at least one demonstration later in the day.

Now for the best part - the food. The 2016 theme was street food and boy did they deliver. There was street food from a lot of different countries so you could taste and enjoy different cultures as you wandered. There was a stall dedicated to crab, Greek food, Indian and a massive barbecue with smoked meat galore.

After an initial wander around, my mum, brother, boyfriend and I had all decided what we wanted to try first. Now they were all very much interested in the buttermilk chicken burgers, which I had a taste of and they were delicious. But my sight was set on the van that sat just to the right of these burgers - a French style street food van. This amazing food was potato in a dough shell, topped with cheese, salami and mini gherkins with some salad and pesto. This dish was so delicious, for a first thing to try it wasn't too heavy and you got a lot for your money.

Along with all of the food vans, there's also all of the stalls at the back beside the demonstration tents. They sold everything from chilli sauce to cakes to fresh meat. I tried for the first time in my life, gluten free cake. Well it was a brownie, with white chocolate and raspberry. It was such an amazing brownie, it just melted in your mouth and was so rich that I got most of my mum's half as well because it was just too much sugar for her in one go. It was much softer than brownies I normally have, as the ones baked at home are more chewy than soft and cake like. But it was definitely a nice treat that I'm glad I got.

One thing that I looked forward to the most was the churros. This is something I never really have unless I'm abroad somewhere, but they are one of my favourite things to eat. You could get six or twelve with sugar, chocolate sauce or toffee sauce. Or you could mix and match the sauces or even get a king churro with the sauce filling one giant one. Needless to say six was more than enough for me and naturally it had to be had with chocolate sauce.

The Foodies Festival is definitely a place where if you love food, you should go. It's normally on for a couple of days in each city it goes to, with Edinburgh being the only place in Scotland that it attended this year. If it comes around again next year, I would recommend heading out and giving it a go.