The Big Feastival 2022
Back in 2014, we visited my brother for a couple of days. We both have a strong passion for cooking, and when we get together often create marvellous things. On this occasion however, my brother told of this event he had just got back from. The Big Feastival.
“Festival?”
“FEASTival”.
He told of the great wonders and delights he saw and tasted there, and the next year, we booked to go with them. And every year since.
So this marks the 7th year we’ve gone although technically, 6th because… well… 2020.
So – what is it? The Big Feastival is a 3 day food festival, with music, chefs and – you guessed it, food. Every year (except last year) there has always been a star food truck. Originally this was a tie between The Cheese Truck (they served the most amazing cheese and bacon toasties) and Other Side Fried, that served incredible fried chicken sandwiches. Both of those food trucks are still going and are based in London, they just sadly (very, very sadly) don’t attend Feastival any more.
Anyway… on to The Big Feastival 2022.
We have a set tradition at Feastival. We camp, but we want a great pitch – so that means getting up at 5am to make sure we’re as close to the front of the queue as possible. This worked well, and we got our ideal pitch. The tradition? The only time (excluding cases of extreme hangover) where it’s OK to have a beer at 10am…
This year, they’d mixed it up a bit. At first, I didn’t like it. I don’t like change… but you know what? Once you walked in the main entrance, it actually flowed better than any other year. So that’s a big tick. A big cross goes to their management of the toilets. This isn’t Glastonbury. This isn’t Reading Festival. This isn’t any ordinary festival and it never has been. It’s always had its own identity but it’s always been very family friendly… this has changed a bit this year and I’m hoping it’s just a blip. We’ll see. They have premium toilets but they’re only in one location so hardly convenient.
Anyway, moving on to delights rather than… not delights. I walked through the main gates and was instantly mesmerised. Everyone else had gone on the usual path but I immediately floated off to the left, a little like one of those cartoon characters following a delicious smell.
I saw this:
Oh my. I looked at the meat, looked at the menu, and realised that wasn’t meat for today – oh no no no. That was meat for tomorrow. Amazing. So that you don’t have to wait the full 24 hours, here you go, this was later on that evening as we were heading back out:
I went back and asked for just the meat; after all, who wants to waste room on carbs?! (OK OK – I did waste a lot of room on carbs, just not here).
On the left, is the beef rib, shredded, with some gorgeously spicy peppers. on the right was a Pork Rib, which if I’m honest, I wish I’d gone back and got more of… but as you’ll see from the quantity of photos, I ate a LOT over these 3 days.
We often share the food between us to allow us to taste everything – which normally does the job and is quite easy but this year there were so many food trucks it was much harder work. On our first walk into Feastival, I spotted a food truck. I had eyed it up already on the website, and was very keen to try it. I love a Bao Bun:
This was from a place called Katsutopia, and it was awesome. As you’ll guess by the name of the place, they did an awesome Katsu Curry. I didn’t get to have it myself but I tried some of my son’s (and sadly I forgot to take a pic) as he couldn’t finish the rice, which had soaked up a lot of the sauce, and it was very good.
If I spoke about every place we went to individually, I’d be here for hours upon hours. There’s a lot to be said about a lot of the places we went to, from KillaWaffles to OnlyJerkin, Oh My Dog to LVK (Little Viet Kitchen)… I can’t remember the name of some of the other places, but the buffalo chicken here was incredibly spicy (loved that) but I found it a bit too vinegary/acidic.
There’s one pic of some dumplings in that gallery, and they had more than one visit:
This place has been to Feastival every year I’ve been there – and every time deliver consistently delicious dumplings. Despite the fact they’ve been there every year I’ve forgotten the name of the place… if you ever head over to Feastival, hunt them down. I want to say Rainbow Gyoza or something but… I don’t know.
Anyway, from 2015 to 2019, both my brother and I had one favourite place for breakfast. I’ll admit, the first year I was perhaps more focused on a breakfast burger… but once I’d tried a Bacon & Cheese Toastie with Bloody Mary Beans, accompanied by a pint of Cider – for “breakfast” (this was normally consumed around 11/11:30am by the time we’d made our way into the main arena). But obviously in 2020 there was no Feastival, and in 2021… the ‘Cheese Truck’ didn’t make an appearance. Even worse, they weren’t there this year.
Determined to try and have a similar breakfast, we did find a cheese toastie place:
It was nice, and satisfied the craving for a cheese toastie, but there were significant differences. It just wasn’t cooked enough, sadly… but they also used leek, instead of onion (and some chunks were pretty big which I didn’t like) but most obviously as you’ll see, they didn’t do bacon.
No bacon!
Well, we continued our time around Feastival, looking for other delights.
It was good to see Tom Barnes at Feastival… again in previous years, they’ve had no shortage of really good, top chefs that are ‘must see’ people. This year (no disrespect to the other chefs they had cooking there) there wasn’t that big of a selection. In fact, I think we only went to see 3 or 4 shows. Normally, that’s where my brother and I would have camped out, joined occasionally by the rest of the family.
We did also get to see Lee Tiernan, and being on the front row I had to jump up and grab a quick pic at the end when he’d finished his dish. It was inspiring to watch him cook, in fact, and he’s a big believer in “nose to tail” cooking which has also, having watched him and bought his book, which is a great read with some awesome recipes.
And so… we’re coming to a close on the awesome adventures of Feastival 2022. But you might ask, what was my favourite meal of the weekend?
Well well well… I’ve saved the best for last.
Rather than picking one favourite, I’ve picked two. Specifically because, there was one favourite that was virtually everyone’s favourite. It was from a place called Kolkati, and it was a tandoori chicken ‘wrap’ in a paratha. Oh, it was just so delicious, with the perfect level of spice and flavour, and the paratha was just amazing – really crispy but lovely and light/fluffy.
But… I mentioned the Bare Bone place. Well, we had to pass them on our way in to the main arena, but had I mentioned – I’d eaten a lot this weekend?! I was not ready for dinner (despite it being around 6pm) so I went up and asked… “Are you going to have enough brisket if I come late, because I’ll be really upset if you sell out but I just can’t eat anything now…!”
The chap I asked relayed the question to someone else, who responded “Mate we have got **** loads of brisket, you’ll be fine!”
Excellent.
I returned later that evening, and said… “I know this might not be doable and if it’s not that’s fine, but I really really want to try all the different meats you have, but I couldn’t possibly eat four meals, is there any way you could just do me the portions of meat?”
I obviously asked the right person, because he did and he did it for a great price. I had to ask him if I could have a pic with him and the food and… well…
I got what I’d asked for!! And as for the food….
So from front to back, we’ve got brisket, bacon, boneless chicken thigh, and pulled pork. Topped with various toppings all of which were just super delicious. This was by far my favourite meal of the weekend but I really struggled (duh) to finish it – so a little of it was distributed to others, but:
- Brisket: Delicious, perfect/amazing texture, great flavour and was definitely my favourite
- Bacon: Really good, a little salty but I quite like that, again really really good flavour
- Chicken thighs: What’s not to like? Chicken is awesome and with a lot of smokey flavour too, this was a solid win
- Pulled Pork: I do love pulled pork, and this was a again just the perfect texture and flavour
So there you have it. Feastival 2022. This year, I definitely think the food trucks were some of the best, although sadly the letdowns were the toilets and lack of top chefs… fingers crossed they’ll work on both these things and next year it’ll be even better!
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