Food Festival

I have three recommendations for attending the Good Food and Wine Show. One is to bring a trolley. Not a shopping cart trolley, but a stand-up two-wheeled trolley will do just fine. There is a general conception that only the older generation shops with trolleys.

However, when you go around the Good Food & Wine Show (GFWS) buying bottle/s of wine, cheese, gourmet drinks, such as jars of Honey Yuzu Tea (The Han Kitchen), a 750ml bottle of Elixir of Ceylon Tea (Dilmah), and other such foodie items, your arms will get a good workout with many shopping bags hanging off! (The GFW Show have trolleys for sale, for this very reason.)

The second recommendation is to come hungry. Don’t eat breakfast beforehand if you plan to arrive at the 10 am opening. There are 350 exhibitors, and most exhibitors will offer you a sample of their goods. As you are wandering the aisles, there are many temptations to try! For those with a penchant for savoury items, you can taste salami, and not just the usual pork salami; there was also some duck salami on offer.

Wander through the Cheese Corner, with not one but nineteen dairy and cheese exhibitors – I was in cheese heaven! For a cheese lover, this would have to be one of the show’s highlights. If you don’t eat dairy cheeses or are vegan, Noshing dairy-free cheese has a variety of tasty vegan cheese flavours. (Just be aware that they are made with almond milk, so they are unsuitable for people with nut allergies). Other savoury tastes offered were delicious kimchi, chilli oils, olives, gourmet macadamias, miso pastes and ready-made recipe bases.

One of the most interesting exhibitors I came across was Circle Harvest, founded in Western Sydney, which has Australia’s largest insect protein farm and food manufacturing facility. They specialise in using cricket protein in their food products, looking forward to a sustainable future. I tried their cricket corn chips, and they were slightly salty and crunchy, with no ‘crickety’ taste!

For people with a sweet tooth, there were certainly many exhibitors offering their desserts and cookies. (I tried the THICC cookies, which were lovely!) There were chocolatiers with gorgeous-looking handcrafted chocolates (Studio Cocoa), cannoli, and decorated donuts to purchase, all looking quite tempting.

With just under one hundred Australian vineyards offering wine tastings, as well as many flavoured gins from Australian distillers, premium liqueurs to sample, alcoholic ciders and such, my third recommendation would be to catch public transport to the Sydney Good Food and Wine Show. It would be wise to limit your tastings to a sip!

The overall layout of the show inside the International Convention Centre (ICC) was structured well. Most of the dairy and cheese sections were together, and there was a concentration of boutique wine makers (although some were still scattered around). There were maps we could download to navigate around the show.

If you were still peckish between the tastings, there was more substantial food to buy. Pop-up restaurants served pies, fried chicken, empanadas, burek, pasta, bakery items, and Vietnamese pho.

There were free-to-watch demonstration areas and various masterclasses with wine, cheese, spirit, and tea experiences that incurred a fee and were recommended to be pre-booked (I could see that most classes were already booked out for the day).

I attended the Fizz and Fromage masterclass at the Wine Selectors Wine and Food Tasting Rooms. This was a fun, small 14-person class, during which we were served a tasting of 4 Australian wines and matching cheeses. Thanks to Nicole, who led our 30-minute session, I picked up some interesting facts about pairing wine and cheese.

During the cheese tastings, I delighted in discovering the joy of the triple brie from the Cole River Farm, an award-winning artisan cheese manufacturer in Tasmania, the Tarago Cheese Farmhouse’s creamy and tasty Shadows of Blue from Victoria, and the bold, earthy Tasmanian cheddar from Pyengana Dairy.

At the entrance was a cloakroom and the welcome station for the GFWS patrons, where they could buy a show bag or a single wine-tasting glass.

The aisles were packed with people, and sometimes, it was difficult to move around. If you are not comfortable in a crowd or with constant loud noise, this may not be an event you’d enjoy. Perhaps a timed entrance to the show could ease the people traffic during the first few hours.

This is a vibrant event where foodies and wine and spirits lovers can sample the best Australia has to offer in one place.

The Sydney Good Food and Wine Show was held at the ICC from Friday, 21 June, to Sunday, 23 June. Tickets started at $39 for a day pass or $59 for a multi-day pass, plus an extra charge for any masterclass experience.

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