Haltwhistle food producers benefit from Taste event
There may have been Caribbean-style music playing, but the flavour of Saturday's Journal Taste 2 Festival was distinctly local.
To the rhythm of the North Tyneside Steel Band, and with the smell of fresh coffee mingling with the cooking meat on the Geordie Burger stand, people from across the North East got a taste of the wealth of quality food and drink on offer in their region.
Sue Robinson of Hadrian Sweets began making cakes for her diabetic grandmother because she could never eat mince pies at Christmas.
Since then, her business has expanded and five years ago moved to Haltwhistle.
She now finds attending festivals helps her speak to the public and learn about their demands and allergies. And she alters her range of sweets to suit them.
She said: "I think the festival has been good. We're hidden away in the sticks and The Journal did a good job at Gibside letting people know we existed. It's word of mouth from there.
"There are a lot of people like The Journal now supporting us. We've seen quite a few local shops opening up this year to just sell locally produced food." Kevin Paris, 33 from Durham, said he always cooked meals from scratch and would rather pay a bit extra for quality local food.
He said: "It's great to meet the stallholders. There's a few products here that we've been buying, but we have to go to the food festival to buy them.
"Supermarkets have got their place, but it's nice you can go out and buy this kind of produce."
It was not just the public who appreciated the food on offer. Butcher Tony Willis, from Haydon Bridge, said hosts Linden Hall bought 100kg of his sausages the night before the event and he was up until 1.30am making more.
Mr Willis actually began his career in supermarkets, but felt there was not enough effort going into the final product.
He said of the festival: "It gets your name out there."
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