Food festival planned for Pevensey and Pevensey Bay
Talking to someone close to the festival organisers we were told today (26 April) “we could be making public some information as soon as next week”.
The event is to link together a total of 16 venues across Pevensey and Pevensey Bay and is planned to take place in October.
The new small scale venture for the Bay is partly inspired by the ‘tennerfests’ in Jersey.
The fixed-price food festival is famous in the Channel Islands. For six weeks from the 1st October, local restaurants across Jersey and Guernsey are encouraged to create special, all-inclusive menus that provide diners with more at a fixed amount.
Travel site Jerseytravel.com explains that “the initiative gives restaurateurs a platform from which to promote their businesses and restaurant goers access to the finest food the islands have to offer at affordable prices. Menus start at £10″
The travel site adds “over the past 13 years, the Tennerfest has grown in popularity, providing diners with excellent value-for-money and an accessible way to sample the best of Jersey’s vibrant food scene”.
Here in Pevensey and Pevensey Bay, the small scale venture could take on a number of different features and flavours.
With a number of complementary offerings from the classic English offerings at the Priory Court Hotel and restaurant to the new Italian coffee, pizzas and crêpes suzette in the new Bay Hotel coffee lounge, there is an eclectic mix of menus and venues.
Our locally famous Indian Raipur restaurant, possesses a wealth of culinary knowledge and experience that comes from chef Ahmed having worked closely with other Head Chefs in the industry. Ahmed has put together a delectable menu.
Raipur was recognised as the ‘The Best Restaurant in the area 2016’, awarded by The Eastbourne Herald.
Their menu has a wide variety of dishes from all across the Sub-Continent of India, something to suit everyone’s taste buds, from mild to spicy, creamy to piquant.
Across the road is the Miah Indian Restaurant & Takeaway in Pevensey Bay, described as ‘an unrivalled range of authentic, imaginative traditional Indian; and Bangladeshi foods.’
Happy Dragon in North Road serves great quality oriental cuisine.
Roses Fish Bar is as good as things get with traditional fish and chips.
Other venues that may take part include the Aqua Bar with their delicious menu ‘full of your favourites from seafood to steak’ and the Moorings with their ‘classic British and European dishes in a beachfront eatery with a conservatory and outdoor seating’, as well as the Ocean View Bakery and Restaurant.
The Castle Inn in Pevensey Bay has developed a menu that has a strong following among locals and visitors with ‘fine homemade food, a tradition now built upon with an expanded menu including a selection of starters, light bites, and desserts. Our fish is locally caught, and all produce is locally sourced wherever possible”.
Add the Royal Oak and Castle Inn in Peveney and the Castle Cottage Tea Rooms in Pevensey and the Smugglers Inn in Pevensey and the Heron in Westham, and what begins to add up is the makings of a small scale tennerfest style food festival that could be both eclectic and exciting fro both residents and visitors
What is interesting about the idea is the way in which menus might be made specifically for the festival that could offer variety and originality.
The festival could draw in hundreds of new people into the locality to see what is on offer at the various locations. Of course many of the venues are within walking distance.
People have already made comparison with Pevfest, a live local music event that ran in Peveney and Pevensey Bay for five years, that became a victim of its own success. The close network of venues is primed for events that link public houses and restaurants together.
What also works with the idea, like Pevfest, which saw up to 30 bands playing live over a single weekend in local public houses, is not just the close proximity of all the venues and the classic seaside small scale setting together with the historic setting of Pevensey.
Families and groups coming to the Bay bring their own life and dynamic to proceedings.
This something that has been seen not just with Pevfest, but with a number f scarecrow festivals here and with the Vehicles of Yesteryear and AquaFest events. In addition, charity weekenders at the Castle Inn. and the wassailling event each year at the Castle Market car park in Pevensey Bay are a big local draw.
The kinds of backdrop we see in Pevensey and Pevensey Bay are natural draws for family and groups bookings and special event organisers with ‘niche’ events.
We are also blessed by having some fine events organsiers in the community who are prepared to dedicate their time and efforts to seeing that these events are successul.
Katie Bundy who runs the Ocean View Bakery and Restaurant with mother Mary and sister Kirsty told us “put us down for this one, I will be doing a different homemade pie every day as part of our special menu offerings for the course of the festival”.
More information about the food festival will be made available in the coming weeks.
The festival is to be accompanied by a state of the art festival web platform which will be supported by a food eventboard showing what is available on a daily basis in all the sixteen venues.
Bay Life understands that in relation to the proposed “Pevensey Food Festival” an online domain name to accompany the small scale food festival will be registered as early as next week.
One of the most interesting things will be to see what each establishment cooks up as their original offering.
Long term resident Gina Bowman who came up with almost the same idea last year commented, with a twinkle in her eye, “you have heard of Pevfest, now try Pevfeast”
The festival is planned to take place through October this year.
