Food is ever-present in our lives. We might think we’re consuming it, but it’s really consuming us as we nibble on foodie TV shows, devour cookbooks and know more about certain celebrity chefs than is entirely healthy. And that’s just the mise-en-place compared with the food festivals we attend.

You could binge on them all year – from the highly evolved Melbourne Food & Wine Festival in March to the celebratory Tasting Australia in Adelaide in May and the popular Good Food & Wine Show in Melbourne and Sydney in May and June – while snacking on local and regional festivals along the way.

For the people organising the festivals, it’s a no-brainer. Everyone eats, right? But we all have teeth and don’t line up to go to dental festivals. What gives?
Aside from the powerful, often irresistible sensory pleasures that eating satisfies, food festivals bring a lot of elements together in one place.

We gain access to our favourite chefs and food heroes. We can taste something new when we explore a different culture or country. They push boundaries by bringing fresh, new voices to the table, not just the ones who’ve always had the microphone.

Just a tip: if you pay just a bit more and go to a restaurant, you can get a very comfortable seat with great food, no queues, access to the chef and no wait for the loos.

On the downside, they can be pretty transactional. At some festivals, the restaurants, audience and sponsors have all paid to be there. There are queues for the food, for the wine and then, as surely as night follows day, for the toilets.

You get to eat out of a cardboard box with a bamboo spoon while leaning against a tent pole because there’s nowhere left to sit. (Just a tip: if you pay just a bit more and go to a restaurant, you can get a very comfortable seat with great food, no queues, access to the chef and no wait for the loos.)

Or, like me, you could run your own food festival. This weekend, I’m heading across town to a bakery pop-up to try a new croissant, then I’m holding a Q & A session with my butcher on the subject of osso buco. The afternoon will then be taken up with an interactive cooking demonstration of slow braising, followed by an exclusive cocktail-tasting.

In the evening, I’m staging a one-off dinner with a dedicated wine pairing, culminating in a masterclass on washing dishes and putting them away. Sure, you can go to a different food festival every weekend. Or it can come to you.

theemptyplate@goodweekend.com.au