Taste of Shetland Festival
The Taste of Shetland Festival is the highlight of Shetland’s ‘foodie’ calendar. It brings together live entertainment and cooking inspiration with some of the best food and drink Shetland has to offer.
This year's Taste of Shetland Festival takes place from 5-7 October 2018, at the Clickimin Leisure Complex, and we are delighted to announce that Gary Maclean, MasterChef: The Professionals Champion and Scotland’s first ever National Chef will be attending. A huge fan of Shetland and a passionate advocate for cooking fresh, nutritious and locally sourced food, Gary will be demonstrating his inspirational culinary skills.
Gary opens the Festival in a new live event - Ready, Shetland? Cook! Tickets are now on sale here.
'Gary says:
“I cannot wait to taste the produce available at the Taste of Shetland Festival, and meet the producers behind it. It’s very exciting to be returning to Shetland and be invited to lead such a high-profile event.”
The Festival opens to the public at 7pm on Friday 5 October. We hope you'll join us and browse the wide range of food and drink stalls from local producers, be the first to try new products launched at the Festival, and have enjoy the delicious hot food on offer. The Main Stage is going to have a host of demonstrations by some of Shetland's best producers, cooks and chefs and we will have new Stage, also featuring demonstrations, in the Bowls Hall. Gary Maclean is cooking live on Saturday morning in the Main Hall and Manju Malhi, our other headline chef, will cook live on Sunday morning.
New for this year is the Peerie Bites competition. We look forward to seeing what the young people of Shetland are going cook for us. Come and hear from them on Saturday afternoon about why they love cooking with local ingredients and see their short films. The winner gets to work with NorthLink Ferries Chefs on developing their dish for use on future menus.
Again, this year we will host the live final of the Cooking Challenge, which has proved to be very popular this time - we've received some excellent entries! This will be held on Sunday afternoon. The prize is 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.
We also have some special events at the Festival to be announced. Keep updated by joining our mailing list, check us out of Facebook and Twitter.
Click here for more details of tickets and Festival opening hours.
And if you'd like a flavour of the event, take a look at our film about the 2016 Festival:
