Cardiff International Food and Drink Festival

I've been living in Cardiff for 9 years, but I've never been to the annual International Food and Drink Festival in Cardiff Bay. When we heard that it was running from 12th to 14th July this year, we decided to find out what it was all about. It was a baking hot day and the Bay was absolutely heaving with people. Cardiff Bay is a beautiful setting for events like this. People must have flocked there in their thousands over the course of the weekend... the combination of food, drink, music and sun was obviously too tempting to miss.

There was a great band from Swansea playing at the festival on Saturday afternoon, and there was a real carnival atmosphere. There was a huge food court selling all kinds of different cuisines, along with masses of stalls selling everything from cheese to cider to doughnuts to sausages. As you can imagine, the various smells wafting over from different stalls were enough to make anyone spend money on at least one thing!

We were starving by the time we got to the festival, so we decided to try a Venison Easy Cheese Burger. I've never tried venison before and part of me felt as if I was eating Bambi, but it tasted amazing. You just can't beat a good chunky burger smothered in onions and ketchup.

We then went to find some ice cream for dessert... there were about 7 different stalls to choose from! We went for Rowlestone Farmhouse Ice Cream in the end as that had the shortest queue, and I chose the Hazelnut ice cream. It was very tasty and creamy, definitely in my top 5 favourite ice creams. Not quite as good as the ice cream at the Magic Kingdom or Joe's Ice Cream, but not far off! That is excellent praise, believe me. I also loved the poster they had on their fridge (see below). So true... ice cream is amazing! If I had a freezer in my flat, I'd eat ice cream every day. This is why I don't have a freezer.

When I saw a stall called The Fudge Box, I just had to go in there to see what was on offer. I'm a little bit obsessed with fudge and love trying all the different flavours. I don't eat it very often seeing as it's horrendously unhealthy, but I thought I'd treat myself to a 200g box of four different flavours for £3.80 as they all looked so tempting. I chose Vanilla Surprise, Mint Chocolate, Maple and Pecan, and Chocolate Orange after a lot of indecisive agonising. I know it's only fudge, but it was an important decision. I can confirm that all the flavours were scrumptious, especially the Chocolate Orange, and that myself and my boyfriend demolished the contents of the box within 24 hours. It would have been rude not to.

We saw a fantastic selection of cheese at the festival, and my boyfriend couldn't resist buying a block of cheese from the Teifi stall. He chose the onion and garlic cheese as he loved the taste of the sample piece he tried. I'm not a big fan of cheese, but even I could tell that it was good stuff. I was quite tempted by the Sweet Pepper cheese but couldn't justify buying such a massive block seeing as I live by myself and don't actually eat a lot of cheese. Two good reasons to leave my purse in my bag at a cheese stall. 

If I wasn't being so careful (or obsessed, whatever you want to call it) about eating healthily and exercising at the moment, I would definitely have bought many more unhealthy items at the food festival. I was massively tempted by the selection of chocolate brownies on offer on the Devilishly Good Brownie stall, but managed to drag myself away and tell myself that I was saving money as well as saving my waistline.

Look how good they look!

We've decided that we'll try to have a proper day out at the food festival next year, especially if it's as sunny as it was last weekend. I might even try eating a different animal next year... who knows! Did anyone else go to the food festival? What did you buy?