Top Fringe promoter serves up food festival

A NEW food and drink festival featuring Fringe performers is to be launched to fill a gap in Edinburgh’s summer calendar of events.

George Square Garden will be playing host to the inaugural Edinburgh Food Festival, which is being staged as part of a yearlong celebration of Scotland’s natural larder.

A leading Fringe promoter has unveiled plans for a fiveday event promoting “gourmet street food” and the best of Scotland’s natural produce.

It is one of two new events which will effectively extend the festival season, which will run from mid-july till the end of August.

Restaurant chain Hard Rock Cafe has already unveiled plans for a three-day series of concerts in St Andrew Square Garden at the end of July. Both squares are opening for the festival season earlier than ever before to accommodate the jazz festival, which runs three weeks earlier than the Fringe.

The Edinburgh Food Festival will be staged during a nineday break between jazz festival concerts and Fringe shows in George Square.

It will feature stalls from at least 15 different producers around the garden, over and above the plethora of food stalls which are already brought in for the festival season.

The new festival, which will run from 29 July to 2 August, will also feature talks and debates on everything from the benefits of organic food and the enriching powers of seaweed to the importance of sustainability to the industry.

Fringe promoters Assembly Theatre plan to make the new food event an annual fixture in the garden, where festival shows have been held for more than a decade.

The move by Assembly to programme shows before the official start of the Fringe is significant as this will be the first season it will share the same dates as the Edinburgh International Festival since 1997.