BBC Summer Good Food Show

This post comes in really late, merely because of my laziness and also cos I was a tad too busy the past 2 weeks. Anyways, like I'd mentioned before..Reena of Coconut Raita was giving away two tickets to the Good Food Show and I, won it! I was ecstatic because I NEVER win anything. This show was in Birmingham, about 2 hrs north of London and since my good friend and fellow blogger Swar of Swars kitchen was living in Coventry, I decided to drag her as well...some good girly time. I have forever been a fan of BBC Saturday Kitchen Live and so the Chef line up was pretty interesting. I had to catch James Martin, Thomasina Miers and the Hairy Bikers, if not anyone else. So off we went to Birmingham for a day filled with loadsa food, drinks and wait-for-it....shopping!!!!

Got there at around 11 and my first impression was, ' gosh its filled with oldies...is this some sorta boring thing?' And then we realised there was a garden show in the next pavilion and assumed they were here for the flower show instead. Wrong we were! 

The advantage of this show (like the Regents Park Taste of London and the Hampton Court Foodies Fest) is the free tasting sessions each and every supplier provides. I mean you just have to walk through and every stall offers you something to eat, drink, smell etc. We completely took advantage of that and after about 2 hrs we were slightly tipsy from the numerous wines, cider, vodka and fancy liqueurs that were offered to us..needless to say, being asked for the id at a few places made us feel great but annoying after a point of time (its nice to know they still think you are under 21 or so). We picked up some taster pizza slices from Dr Oetker's Ristaurante Pizza, grabbed a sandwich and sat down to watch one of the Chefs from a well known Gastro Pub in London cook Salmon in a mussel sauce with some risotto and the works. 

He asked someone from the audience to cook along with him, but we chickened out, but got to taste what he cooked which was yummeee. 

We walked around again, had some ice cold Pimms, picked up some cupcake liners, Swar bought yummy strawberry and cream liqueur, did some more tasting and conveniently missed the Hairy Bikers' Show.

I bragged about it so much to Ro i had to atleast catch a glimpse of them, but again got side tracked when i saw Toffee vodka...now you very rarely get to taste stuff like that right?

Then I got my priorities right and settled down to see Thomasina Miers, previous MasterChef winner and owner of Wahaca- an up market Mexican restaurant chain in London (I have reviewed it here and I actually didn't have a pleasant experience at her fancy pansy restaurant, but I still had to see some celebrity chef do some cooking). So we sat there and watched some guests from the audience do their bit of cooking and Thomasina give them tips etc etc.

And Andi Peters who was supposedly the runner up of one of the MasterChef sessions was doing give aways and asking us questions and Swar and me were so scared whether we would be pulled up to answer since we were sitting right up front. 

But we left half way through because we were hungry again (its the drinking i tell ya) and so had this amazing crepe with banana, toffee and ice cream and I said I wanted to come back to watch James Martin perform but it wasn't on for another hour or so and so we walked through the Gardeners Live area which seemed to amuse me much better than the food and so I ended up clicking more pics of the Garden and the awesome flowers than the food show itself.  Sorry if you are getting bored!

And then we found out I could catch any train back to London and so off we went to Birmingham city centre and shopped liked mad in the huge mega mall...yes I know what you must be thinking...my priorities are all screwed..well who wants to choose food over shopping with a girl friend? well I did and had the time of my life the 2 hrs we spent at the mall. James Martin and Hairy Bikers, I can still watch on BBC but the girl bonding, which I was so deprived of, that i get once in a while, I was def not gonna miss. 

All in all I had a blast, but if you ask me whether id go for a food show like this again..well unless I get free tickets I don't think id want to because its almost all the same, the tasting sessions, the master class sessions etc..well unless Gordon Ramsey decides to grace the occasion, then I might just drop in to hear him say 'The F Word.' :)