Earls Court’s Real Food Festival
Fresh. Seasonal. Produce. No, not the predictable conclusion of an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, but rather the mantra of the Real Food Festival, a gathering for the capital’s conscientious foodies. But has this well-trodden vision of modern eating had its chips, and can the festival even be said to represent it?
Food in Britain has undergone nothing short of a revolution in the past ten years. The foreign perception is often that it’s all about fish and chips and boiled vegetables, but the truth is that the quality and variety of the food on offer, at least in London, is on a par with anything in Europe, or the world. We have rediscovered the vast palette of flavours on our doorsteps and cooking is now indubitably cool and sophisticated.
As with any movement of change, however, there comes a tipping point when substance loses to media churn-out, ethics to commercialism and lifestyle. Lots of people have been doing the slow food stuff for years, and will carry on doing so. The question is, especially given the recession: how long will the rest? The Real Food Festival, in its second year, hopes good food is here to stay, but seems caught somewhere between business and ethos.
Featuring over 300 stands, there is lots to see and taste, from coffee to cheesecake, cider to chorizo, as well as a debating forum, a demonstration theatre featuring big names such as Raymond Blanc and a cookery school. But the place feels like a giant farmers’ market, and there is an underlying tension in having such small-scale enterprise writ large: standards of quality and ethics inevitably work inversely to scale.
Most of the producers are there to make money and make it big, do an ‘Innocent’, and while their individual causes may be noble, you can’t help feeling that the festival jeopardises its own values somewhat: the drive to sell and get a brand out is the dominant force, and charging people £18 for the privilege to buy generally expensive produce (‘to subsidise all our small producers to be here’) seems ludicrous.
I did not see any recycling bins around the place, either, and though there was some good food about there – a Chegworth Valley strawberry and apple juice my favourite – the general impression was one of the hard sell, and green and gold rarely stay mixed for long. I think real food is here to stay, but maybe this isn’t the best way to keep it.
The Real Food Festival ran from 8-10 May at Earls Court 1:
Earls Court Exhibition Centre
Warwick Road
SW5 9TA
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I’m moved to comment on this as your assertion seems to be that producers shouldn’t make money. I think its sad that there is an attitude with some, that small producers, who are invariably finding life pretty tough, competing as they do with a powerful supermarket model, should provide vast quantities of free samples and to sell their produce at break-even or below cost prices. The idea that most of our producers were at the show to do ‘an Innocent’ is also just patently not true, most are simply trying to make a decent living doing something that they feel passionately about. As for us charging £18 for the privelege of buying expensive food – well it would have been pretty easy to reduce this cost by booking in advance or by using one of the promo codes that we had out there very widely. The other key thing about this festival is that we do subsidise the producers to be there as most would not be able to afford the normal commercial rates that it would cost, so you are actually paying to get to see, try and buy from producers that you would otherwise have to travel the length and breadth of the country to find otherwise.
Sorry if I come across as sore, but I do really believe that the small producers working in this country deserve support and that is what we are trying to do – to subsidise them to find them new customers so they can survive what is a pretty lousy economic environment for all.
Peter, thank you for commenting. I sympathise greatly with small producers and efforts to champion their cause; in fact, my brother is one (and spends his days giving out free samples, precisely because they make him money). I have to say, though, the festival felt very commercial. Ok, it’s a business forum, but I think the image you’re selling, of small producers and real food, doesn’t work on a big commercial basis.
As for making it big, I’m sure many of the producers at the show would love to get into supermarkets themselves. But output can only rise to a certain level before the game changes, and I think you’re either a business going for it, which is fine, but you get your mileage out of the emotive small producer tag, then you’re on your own (and the show did look like a good stepping stone for this kind of operation); alternatively, you’re a small producer and ultimately staying that way.
The main reason for my misgivings was that I felt there were much more of the former at the show, and good luck to them. But, and perhaps this the fundamental question, how can it make sense for the public to taste what someone else wants to sell them? You can’t be a charity and a business.