Last weekend on the 18th/19th July, South Bank Parklands hosted the Regional Flavours Festival. Now we’d heard about this festival last year from the good folk at Seatonfire, who said they were going to be there, but we then promptly forgot about it as there was no mention of the event on the radio or by other people.
This year, though, we still didn’t know anything about it, however, Dale did and messaged me on Sunday morning, asking if I was going. About 30 minutes later, myself and the family were on the train heading to South Bank for the festival.
First up, I went looking for an ATM, eventually finding one at the Cultural Centre and then we headed off the festival — only to find lots of popup/portable ATMs there. Doh. Next we went to the Eat-Show-Tell stage, which was setting up for a new event at 12:00pm with Adam Liaw (MasterChef Winner) and fiery foods. I was like, we’re coming back for this and then proceeded into the sea of people and started to sample the food delights.
We had a gozleme from Ahmets’ food truck, curly potatoes and Spanish pulled pork roll from the Sangria Bar truck, super hot beef jerky (wasn’t really hot at all), pineapple chunks, pineapple on a stick, an ice cream cup and then made our way to the Eat-Show-Tell stage. When it said fiery foods, basically, he used a couple of chillies in one of the recipes. It was more him showing off 3 easy to make 20 minute dishes using the 5 essences of cooking — salt, sour, sweet, bitter and umami.
We then ventured to The Hunting Club, as I wanted to sample the local craft beers and the beef brisket. The brisket was the size of a 20 cent piece, 2 of those for $8. Not great value for money, even though it did taste pretty nice. I also bought a paddle of 3 “malt” beers. This included Green Beacon’s Mainstay Amber Ale, Stone & Wood’s Jasper Ale and 4 Hearts Brewing Coal Miner’s Stout. The Amber Ale was the clear winner for me (Phil) and I have to get a six pack of this stuff.
We walked around for a little bit more, got some nutella ice cream sandwiches and then it started to spit with rain, so we called it a day. It was a great day and I’ll have to keep an eye on this event for next year.
