Tamworth’s Taste festival kicks off today, with over 25 events being held from the 4th to the 13th of April.
“We are so excited for Taste,” Natasha Little, Tamworth Regional Council’s Events Officer said, a press conference at Miss Ju Ju’s on Bridge Street.
“For the next 10 days we’ll be celebrating food, wine – everything that’s yummy about Tamworth.”
Some of the events planned include a James Bond-themed cocktails and canapes night at the Ibis hotel, and, of course, the famous Sweet Street on Fitzroy on Saturday.
“This year, we’ve actually concentrated on getting local businesses involved,” Little said.
“That’s from high teas at the Conservatorium, to workshops up at Nundle.”
The bigger Taste Festivals come off the drive to expand Tamworth’s image as no longer being just the country music capital but the Capital of Country, according to Communications officer Neive Roebuck.
“In addition to the country music festival, we actually have a region that provides so many travellers, and also the community with that encapsulated notion of country,” Roebuck said.
“We’ve got a really strong local culture, we’ve got some really great food providers in the region, we’ve got a really big, authentic sense of country.”
Roebuck said that the March and April were key times for family-friendly events, aligning with school holidays, and it was a peak time for travellers to come to the city.
Last year’s festival attracted an estimated nine thousand visitors, bringing in $1,867,090, and generating an estimated fifteen local jobs, with this year’s expanded festival expected to bring in even more, according to TRC.
“Tamworth as a region is seeing an increased trend in people visiting, as well as in the June, July period, which is really exciting for our region.
“One of the great things about the taste festival, it not only gives the opportunity for businesses and providers to showcase their wares, but more importantly, the opportunity for the community to actually go out and try this variety of of providores that we have in the region,” TRC’s Events Manager Barry Harley said.
“I think taste just brings them all together.”
Harley praised the diversity on offer in Tamworth, noting how it’s grown over the years.
“One of the secret ingredients behind good food is the is that multiculture that actually slips into the flavours and the field,” Harley said.
“And so, you know, 50 or 60 years ago, I suppose steak and eggs was probably the most elaborate (dish) you’d actually get involved in.”
One of those breaking the tyranny of steak and eggs is Vong Saisanavong, the Laotian-Australian owner-proprietor of Miss Ju Ju’s.
Miss Ju-Ju’s will be catering an art workshop on Saturday at Tamworth Regional Gallery.
“I wanted to do something with Taste,” Saisanavong said, “but we didn’t know exactly what.”
A friend, who works at the gallery, help Saisanavong hatch the plan to hold the workshop and lunch where attendees will paint a still life of a selection of Miss Ju Ju’s menu items – and then be served those dishes for lunch.
“So what we’re is just doing a collaboration of just different food items that we make, our popular rice paper rolls, our Bao bun – just a kind of a Ms Ju Ju’s themed picture.
“When this collaboration came about, it just seemed so easy because she’s got the outlet, she’s got the people who want to paint, and I’ve got the food.”