The Liverpool Food and Drink Festival will be an opportunity to showcase the best of what the region’s restaurants have to offer. Emma Pinch finds out what’s on the menu

WE CAN buy the local farm produce. And we can watch celebrity chefs transform it into steaming delicacies which are pronounced delicious. And until lick screen TV comes along, we just have to take their word for it.

But next Sunday at Sefton Park we can taste what the cream of Merseyside talent can do with local meat, dairy and veg, without the cost of going to a restaurant. Chefs will cook at 30 or so mini-kitchens under one (very well ventilated) canvas roof, for up to £3 per portion.

“Food is all about taste,” enthuses Candice Fonseca, who is on the steering group of the Liverpool Food and Drink Festival and the proprietor of shop and restaurant Delifonseca, on Stanley Street. “TV is all very well and it looks nice but it could taste like anything. At a farmers’ market, sometimes people find it intimidating because they think they have to know what to do with the food.

“You’re interested but slightly embarrassed that you don’t know more. And at a restaurant it can often cost £30 to £40 to just get past the door to taste what chefs do with local foods. This way, people graze from the biggest to the smallest restaurants involved.”

Cities like Leeds, Birmingham, Bath and Edinburgh have all had A Taste Of . . . Festivals for years, and Liverpool has to some extent lagged behind. Partly, says Candice, because Liverpool’s culinary reputation was in the doldrums – the focus has been on our pubs rather than restaurants. But, she says, this year’s Food and Drink Festival marks the change in the city’s food scene. She’s organised taste theatres for cheese, wine and balsamic vinegar. 

“I went to Chicago’s Taste of Festival a decade ago and it was fantastic. I’d always had it in the back of my mind as a way of launching the festival.

“Liverpool is different to the Wirral or Cheshire, where you are surrounded by producers. As a city, Liverpool is more geared towards dining out. Hopefully, year on year, we will increase it and we’ll be able to create a festival that is restaurant-based rather than producer-based.”

The launch kicks off a week of themed days where diners can visit local restaurants and eat for a discounted price, culminating with the Hope Street Festival. Go to www.liverpoolfoodanddrinkfestival.com for more information.

Mike McGarvey, owner of Thai restaurant Chilli Banana, on Lark Lane, is offering visitors a selection of vegetarian options. “We’ll make Alderley Edge chicken and mushroom satay skewers barbecued with homemade peanut and sweet pickle dipping sauces.

“Lancashire beef Nua Sawan Melt is stir fried beef with tamarind and coriander seeds. Our vegetarian dishes are popular with customers who live nearby, so we are offering Pad Tua Ngog which is stir fried Peover beansprouts with Cheshire tofu and holy basil – a sweet and mildy spicy dish.”

Candice Fonseca will be initiating audiences into the mysteries of balsamic vinegar. She says: “Ever gone to the supermarket, bought a bottle, and then tasted it in a restaurant and thought, ‘that’s not the same and I’ve blown £8 on it?’

“Technically, traditional balsamic vinegar is not even vinegar in terms of chemical properties, it’s fermented grape must. It can only be produced in Modena and Reggio Emila, and quality graded by a consortium and aged in barrels for a minimum of 12 years. At the other end of the scale is 35-year-old balsamic.