Taste of Birmingham

We’re greeted at the gate with plastic flutes of champagne. It’s a nice start. But there’s something strange about this drink that I’m sipping as we plan our strategy, and I can;t put my finger on it. When we backtrack to investigate, it turns out that we’ve been given Kastell Cru-​A champagne lager with a yeasty finish. Beauty.
Some eager looking faces catch our gaze and they beckon us over. These two chaps are the makers of Toffoc a rather rudely named toffeevodka. Distilled where? On the Welsh island of Anglesey, of all places. Its not as sickly as some toffee boozes but not as strong as I’d like, either.
After buying and drinking a couple of ales, it strikes us that we’ve not yet actually eaten any food yet. This all changes at Snowdonia Cheese. Sample size cubes of different cheeses are piled on individual plates with cocktail stick flags to identify them. ‘Little Black Bomber’, ‘Green Thunder’ and ‘Red Devil’ to name a few. As someone of Scottish heritage, who loves whisky and cheese, I’m keen to try ‘Amber Mist’ a mature Cheddar laced with the good stuff. Even straight from the fridge, it has a smooth texture and the creamyness of the cheese and bite of the spirit go magically together.
As well as these offerings from outside of the local area, restaurants and food outlets from Birmingham and the West Midlands are represented selling small meal sized portions of food, as well as offering samples.
Alas, this was in 2010 the last year that Marketing Birmingham let Brand Events run the festival. Marketing Birmingham had planned to make the festival a ‘festival for the people’ as they thought Taste in its former incarnation was too high-​brow. What would they prefer? Sausage rolls and pineapple on sticks? Probably. More fool them for trying to run it themselves because like most things Council run in Birmingham they couldn’t quite get it together for 2011. Here’s hoping for a return in 2012 by Brand Events.