Food festivals in London worth planning a trip around, by month.
Food festivals in London worth planning a trip around, by month.
Taste of London has run five days of tasting plates from the city's best restaurants in Regent's Park each June since 2004, alongside 150 artisan producers.
Focus: Multi-cuisine restaurant tasting festival
Tip: Weekend tickets sell out a fortnight ahead; weekday lunch slots are easier. The chef demonstration arena is the marquee programming.
Notting Hill Carnival in west London, trading since 1966 over the August bank holiday weekend, fills 50 blocks with Caribbean street food, sound systems.
Focus: Caribbean street food (jerk chicken, rotis, rum punch)
Tip: Sunday is family day, Monday is the main parade. Jerk chicken counters line every block; expect £10-15 per plate.
London Coffee Festival at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane in east London, trading since 2011, runs four days of specialty coffee tasting.
Focus: Specialty coffee and barista demonstration
Tip: The Sunday tickets are cheapest and the smallest crowds. The Lab Stage runs demonstration and tasting workshops throughout the festival.
Meatopia at Tobacco Dock in east London, trading since 2013 as an annual three-day live-fire meat festival, hosts 50 chefs cooking over open fires.
Focus: Wood-fired meat festival
Tip: Three sessions per day (lunch, afternoon, evening). Friday evening session is the built chef session; Sunday lunch is family-friendly.
London Cocktail Week, the city-wide cocktail festival since 2010, runs nine days of bar-discount cards, masterclasses, festival-pop-up bars and bartender.
Focus: Cocktails, bartender events and bar discounts
Tip: Buy the £15 cocktail card; 250 bars run £6 signature cocktails throughout the week. Tickets to masterclasses sell separately.
BBC Good Food Show at Olympia in west London, trading since 1990, runs four days of celebrity chef demonstrations and food retail stalls. The November London.
Focus: Celebrity chef demonstrations and food retail
Tip: Buy general admission tickets plus a Super Theatre ticket separately for the headline chef demonstrations.
London Restaurant Festival has run city-wide festival menus, restaurant-hopping tours and chef masterclasses across London every October for 17 years.
Focus: City-wide festival menus and restaurant tours
Tip: Festival menus are booked through OpenTable and go live before the ticketed events. The restaurant-hopping tours sell out first.
London's Lunar New Year festival fills Chinatown and Trafalgar Square with lion dances, food stalls and hot food, and is free to attend.
Focus: Chinese street food, dumplings, hot food stalls
Tip: The Trafalgar Square stalls are the easiest food; Chinatown restaurants take walk-ins only very early or very late on parade day.