Ludlow Food Festival: Foodies’ paradise

Ludlow first established a reputation as a foodie’s paradise in the mid-Nineties. Then, the town boasted three Michelin starred restaurants in a town of 10,000, outclassing Birmingham, with a population of more than a million people.

Now the town of Bray in Berkshire is top of the star charts (seven and counting), with culinary megastar Heston Blumenthal owning three establishments there. But as Will Holland, chef at Ludlow’s La Bécasse and holder of one of the town’s current brace of stars, explains, posh restaurants aren’t everything.

“Michelin-starred chefs create a buzz, but Ludlow is far more than that. There’s a whole foodie culture. We have great shops and smaller places too,” he says.

He lists the three butchers, three artisan bakers, two cheesemongers and a market place packed with stalls four days a week.

“As a chef, just walking through the town is inspiring. There’s sourdough bread made with flour from the mill down the road, raspberries from the market garden nearby, and venison in the butchers from Mortimer Forest, which I can see from my kitchen door,” he says.

The town revels in the quality of the produce on its doorstep, an enthusiasm that spills over into the annual Ludlow Food Festival, the country’s longest established food festival and this year sponsored, for the first time, by the Telegraph.

Now in its 16th year, it’s also one of the largest. Last year, 21,000 people streamed through the medieval castle gates to visit the stalls and demonstrations within.

Chris Bradley, the Glaswegian chef at Mr Underhill’s, a Michelin-starred joint just a cheese-roll down the hill from the castle, agrees that Ludlow is remarkable. “We come back from holiday and think we wouldn’t mind having a holiday here,” he says.

Both Chris Bradley and Will Holland will be demonstrating at the festival, as will Rose Prince and I. And Bradley will also be judging a “Skillbuilder” competition for young local chefs, paving the way for the next generation of Ludlow’s star restaurants.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/7978193/Ludlow-Food-Festival-Foodies-paradise.html