Festival

This year's Taste of Shetland Festival took place from 5-7 October 2018, at the Clickimin Leisure Complex, and we were delighted to announce that Gary Maclean, MasterChef: The Professionals Champion and Scotland’s first ever National Chef attended. A huge fan of Shetland and a passionate advocate for cooking fresh, nutritious and locally sourced food, Gary demonstrated his inspirational culinary skills.

Gary opened the Festival with a new live event - Ready, Shetland? Cook!

• Gary challenged two of Shetland's talented chefs as they cooked against the clock.
• 2 members of the audience won a golden ticket and joined them on stage to make a delicious dish in minutes.

The Festival opened at 7pm on Friday 5 October, straight after Ready, Shetland? Cook!

Many people wondered around the stalls and tasted some amazing new creations from our producers.

The Main Stage had a host of demonstrations by some of Shetland's best producers, cooks and chefs and we also had a new Stage, featuring demonstrations, in the Bowls Hall. Gary Maclean cooked live on Saturday morning in the Main Hall and Manju Malhi, our other headline chef, will cooked live on Sunday morning.

New for this year is the Peerie Bites competition. We were amazed at what the young people of Shetland cooked for us.The winner gets to work with NorthLink Ferries Chefs on developing their dish for use on future menus plus they recieved return journeys for them and their families to Aberdeen.

Again, this year we hosted the live final of the Cooking Challenge, we had received some excellent entries! The prize was a wonderful foodie weekend in Edinburgh for the winner: return flights for two to Edinburgh; an overnight stay in Porteous' Studio, an architect-designed holiday home in Edinburgh; and a six-course tasting menu with matching wines at Restaurant Martin Wishart with champagne on arrival, coffee and handmade petits fours, as well as a visit to the kitchens. This year's competition is sponsored by EnQuest Sullom Voe and we are extremely grateful to them for their support.

And if you'd like a flavour of the event, take a look at our film from this years amazing festival.