Cafe Society: Adding a touch of spice to the Taste

FORGET what know about the Taste of Tasmania — it’s all about to change, says festival director Brooke Webb.

Taste of Tasmania festival director Brooke Webb. Picture: MATHEW FARRELL

LIKE many others, Brooke Webb was horrified by broadcaster Alan Jones’ on-air bullying of Sydney Opera House chief executive Louise Herron last week.

Webb tuned in to the story after the 2GB shock jock took issue with management’s refusal to light up the famous sails to promote The Everest horse race.

Far away in Hobart, Webb followed the story as a capitulating premier overruled Opera House policy governing the World Heritage-listed building, triggering a waterfront protest by furious Sydneysiders when the projection went ahead.

“I was absolutely disgusted, one because of Alan Jones and the way he bullied Louise Herron and secondly that there was no consideration for what [precedent it set] or of the artistic vision behind the Opera House.”

Webb knows all about lighting up those sails. The festival director of the Taste of Tasmania spent five years at the Opera House before being recruited late last year to figuratively light-up the Hobart food fest. And she knows how crucial it is to bring a community along with you.

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As project manager for special events, Webb was responsible for the Opera House’s 40th birthday celebrations (it turns 45 this week) and later for running the Lighting of the Sails with specially commissioned artwork for the annual Vivid festival.

Now she is in charge of this summer’s 30th anniversary of the Hobart City Council-run Taste, which is the country’s longest-running food and wine festival. It’s a remarkable achievement for any festival to reach three decades and Webb is determined to seduce us into party mode.

“I want everyone to feel a sense of joy,” she says of the space and program she has spent months overhauling. “My wish is that the Taste gets to celebrate its birthday. It hasn’t got to do that for a long time because it’s been so malnourished.

“It had become a cut and paste affair. The budget was signed off in September [annually], which forced organisers straight into a delivery phase. The festival was operational, it wasn’t creative.”

This year Webb secured extra funding and clawed back seven weeks on that timeline to devote more attention, development and creativity.

She announced a new ticketed culinary program on Monday that will bring a wealth of cooking and appreciation workshops with high-calibre chefs and new revenue streams.

Another innovation is a dedicated space – Parliament Lawns – for emerging producers. As yet unnamed, it will channel a hipster vibe on the site previously devoted to family entertainment and offer edgy fare including fermented cockroaches.

If that sounds a bit too Dark Mofo for your tastebuds, fear not, she laughs.

“The Winter Feast comparisons happen all the time, but the Taste is not an artisanal festival. Our audience is more diverse. They want everything from schnitzel and fish and chips to the exotic extremes.”

There will be no need for a dedicated childrens’ zone anymore, she says, because the whole PW1 precinct will be a wonderland.

“It’s very childlike and imaginative. I want people to walk through the gates and go ‘Wow’.”

IF you see Webb around town, please don’t tell her you went to the Taste once six years ago and haven’t been back. She’s heard it before – a lot.

“I would say ‘forget what you know about Taste, because that chapter has closed now’.”

She says people also ask if “you are the girl who said you were going to scream if you heard the expression ‘paddock to plate’ one more time?”

She is indeed the owner of that blithe line we quoted her on last year, but she has since tempered her rhetoric. “Now I’d say the concept is amazing and I live by it,” she says, though she still reckons it’s done to death as a marketing slogan.

“It’s become a real-life thing for me … I’ve even started preserving lemons from my tree and I am wowed by the dimension of trading [backyard] produce here. ”

At the Opera House and previously in her decade in New York, she says that kitchen conversation was about ticket sales: ‘“Did you hear this show bombed? Oh my God, what was their marketing campaign’.

“It was anonymous. Down here, you don’t feel invisible. You feel part of something bigger.”

This, she says, is the future of the Taste, and what the rest of the country wants a bite of.

“We are talking to a national audience,” she says.

And what qualities does she bring from Sydney’s waterfront to ours as she strives to illuminate the ultimate Tassie spread of food, wine and live entertainment from December 28 until January 3?

“A great respect for creativity, the artistic practice, telling stories and the community,” she says.

And what is she sharing of herself? Her exuberant sense of fun, for a start. There will be no deals to beam horse-racing silks onto walls, but there will be vivid colour and, who knows, perhaps a unicorn or two.