By Sasha Moedt (The Cascade) – Email
Date Posted: September 15, 2011
Print Edition: September 14, 2011
If you want to get your teeth into a bit of Abbotsford this September, look for the food and cooking festival coming to us mid-month. EAT! Fraser Valley is a medley of food and beverage tasting, menu-surfing, and education. It takes place at the Tradex Exhibition Centre September 16 to 18.
The festival features wine, beer and spirits tasting, ‘Bite of the Valley’ food sampling from an array of local restaurants, as well as the CityTV Master Chef Competition presented for the first time in Abbotsford. In addition, a center stage, the Food Network Celebrity stage, will be set and well-known chefs and experts will be presenting their knowledge to the public every hour.
The wine, beer and spirits tasting will be from an assortment of valley breweries, wineries and restaurants. Displays and information booths will be set out, and samples are cheap, with the maximum price of four dollars.
Liz Avery of the Lotusland Vineyards will be participating in the beverage tasting in hopes to “attract customers from the Fraser Valley, people who are focused on eating local, and organic foods and beverages.” Other well-known breweries and vineyards such as Yellow Tail Wines, and Dead Frog Brewing will be participating. Lotusland Vineyards will be pouring their most popular wines for the public. Avery wants to show the public “wines that are priced within their budgets…[and] besides being organic, good for you from a health standpoint.”
The Bite of the Valley exhibition, on the other hand, involves the serving up of menu items from ten Valley restaurants; from Milestones to Frankie’s Italian Kitchen. Appetizer portions are served, again with the cap price of four dollars.
One of the participators of the Bite of the Valley is The Baron Bar and Grill, this being their second year at EAT! Fraser Valley. Sherry Russell of the Baron says that she is enthusiastic about their past experiences at the festival: “The first year we were there was amazing, we met so many people that didn’t know where we were and because we are a small restaurant that specializes in homemade food, rather than a franchised restaurant, the venue was great for us to show off our food. People could see our logo, and come back in the future to try us out.”
At the Bite of the Valley, you’ll get a chance to talk to the chefs and owners of local restaurants, look through their entire menu, and sample their own menu selections. Russell says that they will be “serving our outstanding ‘bambino burger’ fresh off the BBQ, an amazing spicy jambalaya penne, with chorizo, prawns, and chicken, and our New York deli cheesecake with chocolate raspberry sauce and hazelnut whipped cream.” Definitely something worth checking out!
The well-known CityTV Master Chef Competition will take place at this year’s EAT! Fraser Valley. Seventeen chefs from across BC will be competing, Iron Chef style, in front of an audience all three days of the festival.
The central stage at the EAT! Festival is the Food Network Celebrity stage. Here three Canadian cooking-stars will take the stage and do their cooking-stuff: Chuck Hughes, host of Food Network’s ‘Chuck’s Day Off’; Rob Feenie, probably best known for his White Spot commercials but is more renowned for being the Iron Chef America winner; and Graham Kerr, the celebrity Galloping Gourmet man. Every hour throughout these three days will see one of these chefs, and others for education on food pairing, serving, prepping and much more.
An additional show stage during the festival will present the Just Here for the Beer team. Just Here for the Beer is a Vancouver-based beer education and consulting company who will take the stage every hour, giving educational classes and seminars on beer tasting.
For those of us that can’t keep their hands off a wax-wrapped Babybel, the Dairy Farmers of Canada will be presenting a series of cheese-seminars. Topics covered by the cheese experts includes storing and serving cheeses, differences between the crusts and textures of cheeses, and pairing wines and cheeses. Thirteen seminars will be held throughout the three days.
EAT! Fraser Valley runs Friday the 16th from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m., and on the 17th from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., while the eighteenth ends at 5 p.m. Details on stage scheduling are online at www.eat-fraservalley.com. So if you’re looking for a taste of something new this fall, look up the EAT! Fraser Valley in Abbotsford at the Tradex.
