Abergavenny Food Festival 2010

What a treat! We've just returned from a weekend at The Angel Hotel, which is the heart of the Abergavenny Food Festival - an annual two day event attracting over 30,000 visitors. Highlights included talks by: Bruno Loubet, Jose Pissaro, Bill Granger and the Professor who advises Heston Blumenthal and a debate chaired by Sheila Dillon about markets vs supermarkets. It somehow raised a lot of issues but failed to reach the conclusion that they are the consequence of the demise of the food culture in the UK amongst other social changes since WW2 (industrialisation, urbanisation, growth of supermarkets, women working, loss of small retailers on the high street, importance of price over quality etc). It was pretty good though!

We ate at The Angel twice and I had the same meal twice, it was so delicious the first time: a super-food salad of quinoa, avocado, broccoli, pumpkin seeds, feta and cucumber. Yummy. We also ate at the Clytha Arms, which is a CAMRA pub of the year winner. We had a homely meal in a lovely bar with dogs, board-games, and men playing cards! David had rabbit and hazelnut terrine followed by venison and dumplings and I had baked figs with goat's cheese followed by chicken baked in Chimay.

There are four michelin starred chefs cooking in pubs around Abergavenny, and they are apparently well worth visiting - we tried to book too late and couldn't get a table: Matt Tebbutt at the Foxhunter, Shaun Hill at the Walnut Tree, Simon King at 1861 and James Sommerin at a pub I can't remember. Oh yes, and Stephen someone at The Hardwick. All are within 5 or 6 miles of Abergavenny. Finally, we went to Gliffaes yesterday afternoon: a delightful, old fishing lodge on the Usk where afternoon tea is simply unbelievably tempting and can be enjoyed overlooking a verdant, gentle valley that is home to the Usk. I think it would be the perfect spot for a wintery weekend away.

Lots of new customers since the show and we have broken the border! Fenton Farm Shop in Scotland is now stocking Nisi's!

Speciality and Fine Food Fair - Olympics here we come??

What a great three days! The show was incredibly successful and we had a lot of interest from independent retailers across the UK as well as some nice high profile names - Harrods and Selfridges included! The most exciting result, however, is that Nisi's may be supplying biscuits to the Olympics. We were one of sixteen companies to present our products to the catering team responsible for the Olympics. They loved the biscuits and got into the nitty gritty of whether I'd be willing to do demonstrations for athletes etc. I assumed it was a rhetorical question! We won't hear until January so hold your breath...