Eat! will put us on culinary map

Feb 7 2008 by Jane Hall, The Journal

Jane Hall gets a taste of what NewcastleGateshead’s Eat! 08 festival has to offer.

A FEAST for all the senses is in store this summer as plans for a unique Tyneside food festival have been revealed.

Key events will include a restaurant in the dark to be staffed by blind waiters and a 10 Things to Eat Before They Die gala dinner featuring vanishing artisan foods from around the world.

There will also be a Guerilla restaurant run by top chefs in a secret Tyneside location.

But at the heart of the Eat! 08 NewcastleGateshead festival – announced yesterday as part of the Culture 10 programme of world-class events for the coming year – will be local food, with a weekend of fringe events organised by producers from around the region.

IncrEdible North East will include a mystery bus tour and foraging trip, as well as Eat! In The Street where participants will share slices from a giant Angel Cake of the North, created by children and communities to celebrate the icon’s 10th birthday.

Fishy events championing the rich diversity of edible seafoods available on our doorstep, food markets, dinners and demonstrations using local produce will also be on the menu during Eat! 08, which starts on May 3.

The festival, which will run on both banks of the River Tyne for 19 days, builds on the success of last year’s pilot Eat! event which ran for nine days in April.

Making a comeback is the Guerilla restaurant. Catering for only a small number of diners per sitting, it will open its doors on May 12 and close five days later. Like last year, its location will be a closely-guarded secret.

Eat! festival director Simon Preston said organisers would have been “lynched” if the Guerilla restaurant hadn’t made a re-appearance. “It was our most talked about event last year, but this year it will be a different experience. I can promise the location will be somewhere very special. All I will say is it’s not going to be about fine dining, and sensible footwear not stilettos will be advisable.”

Aware that a new talking point was needed, Dans Le Noir has been added to the extensive programme. It is a restaurant entirely in the dark staffed by blind waiters, where customers will experience a series of unusual and surprising food sensations and convivial encounters through the four senses which are enhanced by the withdrawal of sight.

Mr Preston said: “We are working on the principle that 80% of the world we experience is through vision and 20% through our senses, so if you take away the dominant factor, which is sight, in a short space of time you will be focusing on your other senses.

“For me what is interesting is conviviality in the dark. You will be sat at communal tables and enter into conversations with people you can’t see and you will have taken away the need for eye contact and any prejudice.”

Eat! 08 will start with a flotilla of fishing boats sailing up the Tyne. Fresh fish will then be collected by local chefs and rushed back to their restaurants to launch Super Fresh Fish Supper events.

Many events will run throughout the 19 days, including the Convivial Table at Home, where people from many cultural backgrounds will twin with North East families to exchange companionable dinners. Small and medium-sized businesses are again being invited to be involved by partnering local restaurants to organise special long lunches.

As part of Eat! 08, in October there will be a Cooking for Kings dinner commemorating the 80th birthday of the opening of the Tyne Bridge by King George V and Queen Mary and recreating the banquet the royals might have eaten that day using local produce and researching old North East recipes.

Mr Preston said: “Eat! has grown dramatically since last year, partly because we had a fantastic reaction to the pilot. We had wanted to put on a fairly low-key event, but in the end we found the participants and the public gave us astounding feedback.

“Clearly we have got more ambitious plans for 2008. Local input has grown dramatically. We went from a standing start last year so there was very little time for research. This time we have had a year to do it and have found scores of new producers.

“Eat! is unique in that it’s a very mixed urban/rural festival. We wanted to extend it to three weekends and wanted to provide a lot more impetus for people to come to the region to enjoy what is going on.

“I really hope this year the whole country will take note of this festival and see that we are worth noticing when it comes to food and drink.”