The Will Adams Festival is back in Medway: we have all the details

We preview two popular food & drink festivals, meet an up and coming chef and serve up some rum cocktail recipes.

If you haven’t yet sampled the delights of one of the pop-up foodie events at the Tonbridge Old Fire Station, it’s probably because you can’t get tickets. The sellout events, which often raise funds for local causes, have ranged from supper clubs and cocktails evenings to curry nights and even latte art. The supper clubs, with their extensive list of courses, have proved particularly popular, and have been presided over by award-winning chefs including Masterchef The Professionals’ Justin Brown to Ben Spalding, and Thackerays.

So at 24, chef Russell Goad is in good company. He has headed up two supper clubs, the most recent of which was a sell-out with diners sitting down to a six-course meal including chicken liver parfait, brioche and apricot, spider crab, tomato and grapefruit, and lamb rump, baby gem and Jersey Royals. Despite his tender years, he has already been cooking professionally for six years, after heading straight into work with Waitrose Cookery School from sixth form at Mascalls School in Paddock Wood.

Russell was always destined for the culinary world, cooking up treats for school friends from an early age. He said: “I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. It is a passion - it is never a chore.

“It can be stressful and a lot of pressure but it couldn’t be more amazing. You get such a buzz off it.”

“When people are paying for it I am a bit more nervous, but it also makes it more exciting.”

He recently took six months off travelling around Thailand and Cambodia, and is now set to start with Marks & Spencer as a development chef. His ultimate goal is to be his own boss, and run his own restaurant using local, seasonal ingredients to make great, British food. He is also one of a number of local chefs set to be featured in The Cook Book Sevenoaks/ Tonbridge/tunbridge Wells by children’s charity Tree of Hope, and being put together by Caroline Kings from Eat Around Tonbridge, photographer Severien Vits and foodie Charlotte Rogers. The celebration of chefs, restaurants and producers in West Kent features stories and recipes from the likes of Cocolicious, Fuggles Beer Café, and The Lemon Grove, and is expected to be published soon.

For upcoming Tonbridge Old Fire Station events search Old Fire Station on Facebook

Russell, far right, middle row, at the launch of a new Tonbridge cookbook and his edible canapé, below