A four-day food festival with huge artisan market and Bake Off competitions is coming to Leeds this summer

19th April 2022

Categories: Food & Drink, Leeds, What's On

Four days of food is coming to Harewood House this summer.

The Queen’s Jubilee weekend is quickly becoming a jam-packed weekend. There’s everything from Live at Leeds festival to street parties kicking off the four day weekend- and that’s before any of the official royal events have taken place.

Like all good celebrations, us Brits say it best with food: whether’s it’s a birthday cake or celebratory bottle of something fizzy, there’s always a reason or an occasion to toast with full bellies and crumb-covered smiles.

Whilst Leeds doesn’t have a single big tent of its own with Mary Berry, the city will be celebrating in Bake Off style with a huge food festival that’s inviting foodie from across Yorkshire to celebrate the Jubilee bank holiday weekend in the only way us Brits know how.

Surround yourself with local indie businesses and up-and-coming brands at this four-day foodie extravaganza.

Called the Great British Food Festival, visitors will be able to wade through masses of cooking stalls, menus aplenty and even have a trial run in a Bake Off style tent to see if you have what it takes to follow in the footsteps of the six TV show winners from Yorkshire.

Harewood House will transform into a food-lover’s dream over the bank holiday weekend to include an artisan market, street food, walk-up bars

Chefs from local restaurants and pubs will take to the stage across the four days to show you how to recreate their culinary masterpieces in the comfort of your own home, even using everyday materials and ingredients. Sharing shortcuts and tips of the trade, the light-hearted entertainment is for novices and professionals alike: running each hour 11am – 4pm.

If you’re more interested in where your food comes from- or rather can come from, foraging walks with one of the UK’s only accredited foragers will take place every day in small groups. Guided walks are around the festival site in a small group. The pushchair and wheelchair-friendly events last around 45 minutes to 1hr and start at 10am, 11.15am, 12.30, 2pm and 3.15pm respectively.

If that’s not enough to keep the whole family entertained, there will be five kids cookery classes per day to keep the little ones on their toes and allow them to leave with their very own baked goods. Choose from either rocky road truffles or peppermint and orange pebbles and let the chefs take charge of the cooking and most importantly, the cleaning up afterwards.

Serious bakers can take their cakes in for inspection at the Cake Off event, where over 600 cakes have been cut, tasted and deliberated, but only one will be crowned winner. The free-to-enter event encourages all aspiring foodies to enter this exciting competition with yet-to-be-announced prizes.

50% of the score is obtained from our judging panel who will rate the entries on their presentation and taste. The other 50% of the votes will be scored by the general public.

At each Festival we pick members of the crowd to come and sample what is on offer, then they will hand in their scores. Once all scores have been tallied, our independent adjudicator will announce the winner.

Plus, once the judging is over all cake entries are open for anyone to sample, so even if your idea of baking is watching Mary Berry on the telly, you can still make the most of this Bake Off style event without even lifting a whisk.

If you’d prefer competitive eating to nibbling away at cake crumbs, there’s Man V Food challenges aplenty here too. Enter the sausage eating contest, where competitors eat as much sausage as they can in six minutes and six seconds; the chilli challenge where contestants eat until they need to reach for their pint of milk (medics will be on hand) and even a couples ‘treat challenge’ where teams of two take on a mammoth sweet treat with a twist.

To enter the Great British Food Festival, entrants require a pre-booked ticket. Costing from £13.20 for adults and £7.20 for children, all tickets can be booked on the Great British Food Festival website.

Feature Image- Great British Food Festival