Feeling Festive: 6 of the World's Most Unusual Food Festivals

Summertime is festival time, and in the world of food that means smoked meat, happy monkeys, oversized breakfasts and the chance to throw things at each other

Feature by Peter Simpson | 10 Jun 2015

While other sections of this fine magazine may suggest that you spend your holidays in a field, surrounded by loud people with their ‘music’ and their ‘iPads’, or running from makeshift stage to makeshift stage in some abandoned railway yard or other, we’re here to tell you that there is another way. It’s time to swap your earplugs for oven gloves, and eschew your standard music or arts festivals for one of a bumper crop of food festivals taking place across Europe and beyond this year.

Batalla de Vino
Ever wanted to throw a glass of wine over a friend in a dramatic, soap opera-style move, but never found a good opportunity to do so? The Haro wine festival’s annual Batalla de Vino, or Wine Battle, is the perfect cover for all your rouge-chucking antics. It’s an event with all the hilarious pomp and bizarre spectacle of a TV drama – the town’s mayor leads battlers up a mountain on a horse, before it all kicks off and everyone starts firing water pistols filled with Rioja at each other. The drinking then continues on back in the town below for the next day or so, leaving plenty of time for some hilariously convoluted drama to unfold. Haro, Spain; 29 Jun.

Grillstock
Meat! Whuuh! MEAT! All of the meat! If these are sentiments you can identify with, we have the event for you. Grillstock is a festival of meat and music – the Manchester leg took place last month, while the Bristol and Manchester legs feature rap royalty De La Soul and Grandmaster Flash plus more slow-cooked flesh than you could shake a leg of lamb at. Need tips on how to barbecue meat without spending four hours trying to cook one sausage, or want to watch people eat for sport, rather than for enjoyment or because they’re actually hungry? Grillstock have you covered, leaving you to the business of munching through an entire cow in the space of a weekend. Bristol Grillstock 11-12 Jul; London Grillstock 5-6 Sep.

Phelps Sauerkraut Weekend
If you bumped into The Skinny in the street, and asked us what we’d been up to, and we said: ‘Not a lot, just researching a three-day sauerkraut festival in the US’, you might look at us like we were mad. Well look again fools, because this is a real thing that’s happening! The town of Phelps, New York has held a festival to honour everyone’s favourite use of cabbage since 1967, and it’s gone from strength to strength every year. Nowadays, the event features carnival rides, a parade through the town, fireworks and a motorcycle show. Attention all food festival operators – ditch that display tent filled with TV chefs trying to flog £5,000 ovens, and replace it with a motorcycle show. Phelps, NY, USA; 31 Jul - 2 Aug.

La Tomatina
For decades, over 40,000 people descended on the Spanish town of Bunol every August to throw tomatoes at each other, in scenes that resembled Woodstock 1969 crossed with a pan of bolognese sauce.
While some of its renegade spirit has been lost over the years to pesky modern advances like 'ticketing' and 'cutting the numbers to prevent horrendous overcrowding', it’s still an anarchic spectacle. Because, and let’s never forget this, it’s still about throwing tomatoes at strangers in the street on a weekday morning. Bunol, Spain; 26 & 31 Aug.

The Giant Omelette Celebration
It’s nice to celebrate things, be they birthdays, achievements, or successful eBay purchases. But to really mark an occasion you need to, as they say, 'go big'. And in terms of big-going-ness, they don’t get much bigger than the annual Giant Omelette Celebration in Abbeville, Louisiana. Essentially, it’s a self-fulfilling bash – organise an event to celebrate the fact you’re knocking up a 5,000-egg omelette in a twelve-foot wide pan, make said omelette, and rejoice in the making of it. Still, it’s difficult to be too cynical about such wonder. Come on, a giant omelette! Giant! Abbeville, LA, USA; 7 & 8 Nov.

Lopburi Monkey Banquet
First thing’s first – you won’t be eating any monkeys, so put away that accusing glare. The Monkey Banquet is, in fact, an almost-literal chimps’ tea party, where every year the residents of Lopburi in central Thailand prepare a feast for the town’s primate population. There are invitations, and tablecloths, and eventually the whole thing degenerates into a messy shambles as the guests start throwing the meal at each other and scratching themselves – it’s everything you’d want from the classic dinner party, but with none of the tidying up. And with added monkeys. Lopburi, Thailand; 29 Nov.

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