Let's have a Yorkshire feast

FOR years, we have looked elsewhere to be inspired by food. We worshipped the culinary cultures of France and Italy, savoured our Indian and Greek restaurants, believed only London chefs were worthy of rosettes.

Now, finally, we are beginning to realise that there is great food on our doorstep. And plenty of it.

So many fresh tastes, new approaches, talented chefs exist right here in Yorkshire. That knowledge underpinned the Evening Press campaign, Eat Local. And the seventh York Festival of Food and Drink, which starts on Friday, is a similar celebration of regional excellence.

"It's really where the festival needs to be, in future and for always," said Michael Hjort, its food adviser. "If you are going to run a York festival, the key word is the first one. It has to reflect the location in some very obvious way."

Mr Hjort is the owner of Melton's and Melton's Too restaurants and is secretary of the York Hospitality Association. He has been involved in organising the festival in previous years, and believes "there was a tendency to think we are putting this on as part of the tourism project".

Too much emphasis was placed on bringing celebrities up to put on a show. "People have come to recognise you need some heart and soul in a food event, and that really has to be about your location."

The Yorkshire theme is reflected across the ten-day event. It kicks off with BBC weatherman Paul Hudson launching the Local Produce Guide. Other events in the food theatre have names such as Around The World From Yorkshire and A Yorkshire Mixture.

Several local markets are being staged during the festival, and the roving feasts allow diners to eat their way around York.

Mr Hjort is sure people are becoming more interested in Yorkshire food. "Over the last few years there has been a big recognition among the British public that there is such a thing as regional food and regional cuisine.

"There are hundreds of thousands of people involved in agriculture and the follow-on industries of food manufacture, processing and so forth. The tragedy is we fly food off to London, Paris or whatever and we import stuff to replace it."

Yes, we will always have to import balsamic vinegar, parmesan and other classic foodstuffs. But we also have fantastic salad leaves, world-beating cheeses, and wonderful meat being produced within a 30-mile radius.

Yorkshire food is traditionally seen as staid and stodgy, but can be modern and exciting. "Take pan fried medallions of pork with wild mushrooms. Both the pork and the mushrooms come from Yorkshire. It may be that we have imported some sense of a continental sauce, but that's all."

And Yorkshire grub can be healthy, too. "It's about the way you approach local foodstuffs," Michael said. "That's what makes a dish light or calorific. Take something like Whitby crab or the exotic leaves from Brunswick Nursery: why should Yorkshire food be unhealthy?"

Among the local events at the food festival is something called the Stockbridge Challenge. In this, Michael will be joined by three top York chefs: David Spencer from the York Pavilion Hotel, Phil Upton of the Grange and Michael Cushing from Rish. They will create dishes based around the salads, fruits and vegetables grown by the Stockbridge initiative, near Cawood.

Maria Rish said she always tried to source local ingredients for the menus at her Fossgate restaurant. One of the most popular dishes at Rish right now is Yorkshire fillet steak, which can be topped with a herb-filled mini Yorkshire pudding - a modern twist on an old classic.

Rish is involved in several food and drink festival events. "It's a great advert. It gets better and better, and really puts York on the map - for restaurants, for food, for everything," said Maria.

For the first time this year, there will be an art exhibition tied to the festival. Entitled Provenance - Real Food: Real People, it takes the form of photographs of food and food producers from across Yorkshire by Dominic Ibbotson, accompanied by essays by writer James Houston.

It opens at the Impressions Gallery in York on September 15 with a talk by television chef Brian Turner. An accompanying book will also be launched at that reception.

The idea came to James at the Evening Press Eat Local banquet at the Dean Court Hotel earlier this year. There, food producers talked about their work before each of the courses.

Both the book and exhibition have been turned around in two months, backed by the Yorkshire Regional Food Group.

"Provenance is essentially about making the connection between the food on your plate and where it comes from," James said. "There's a huge number of people out there producing a wide variety of very high quality food products.

"We have had a lot of samples as we have done the tours. When I tasted what real food and beer are like, it made me want to never go to a supermarket again."

James was tremendously impressed by the commitment of the local food producers he interviewed. "They're very dedicated. A lot of them have been hit financially by the crises in food production, such as foot and mouth. But these people have stuck to pure methods of production."

So can they survive and thrive? James has concerns about who will take over some of these small concerns when their founders retire. Many of them have discouraged their children from going into the business because it is so risky.

That said, he is hopeful. "I feel optimistic in that all the growers and producers have told us there's a noticeable resurgence of interest in quality local food."

The York Festival of Food and Drink runs from September 12-21. More details from www.yorkfestivaloffoodanddrink.com

The Provenance book will be available after September 15 from Impressions and other festival venues, price £10. See www.provenance.org.uk

Updated: 09:07 Saturday, September 06, 2003