Real Food Festival
10 May 2011 – This month’s Real Food Festival featured over 400 carefully selected food and drink producers. Unlike other events the festival focuses on even the smallest of producers with an emphasis on organic, locally produced and sustainable goods.
More and more people are really starting to care about where their chocolate comes from and to understand why their food choices matter, not just to their health, but to the community and our natural environment. This belief was highlighted by a number of chocolate companies who exhibited, including Auberge du Chocolat who was showcasing their new range of single origin bars and Original Beans, who include a unique tracking number with each chocolate bar they make. Customers can type this number in on the company’s website and find out where the bar was produced in addition to being able to read about Original Beans’ conservation efforts at this rainforest or origin.
All of the chocolates on show tasted absolutely gorgeous. It is not surprising that many of the companies had received awards from the Academy of Chocolate this year. Auberge du Chocolat won four awards including a silver award for its cranberry and vodka ganache and a bronze award for its salty nutty caramel ganache; Baruzzo Fine Italian Chocolate won a silver award for its 70% quinche chocolate; Jaz & Jul’s won a gold award for its caramel and lime flavoured hot chocolate; Niko B Organic chocolates won a Bronze award for its Honey Nougat, and finally, Original Beans won a gold award for its packaging.
Also present at the show was Willie Harcourt-Cooze, who I had met up with earlier in the month, when he relocated his factory from Devon to London for the day. Harcourt-Cooze was the star of a Channel 4 documentary ‘Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory’ – in 2008, which was followed in 2009 by a second series; ‘Willie’s Chocolate Revolution: Raising the Bar’. Harcourt-Cooze was at the festival representing his company, El Tesoro. He has been farming cacao for more than a decade at Hacienda El Tesoro, his farm high in the mountains of Venezuela. His cacao bars are made from beans selected from the very best cacao regions around the world. The bars are all single bean origin of exceptional quality, each bar representing the natural flavour of the region. At the show Harcourt-Cooze showcased some of the latest additions to his Delectable range.
It was not only chocolate companies that exhibited, but also other confectionery companies such as Loopy Lisa’s Fudge; Stoats Porridge Bars; Cupcake-a-licious and the Sweet Tooth Factory.
