The UK’s Largest Free Seafood Festival
The UK’s largest free seafood festival has just completed another outstanding and busy weekend of great dining and drinking.
Leading the sponsorship for the event is one of England’s top sparkling wine producers from Sussex, the award winning vineyard of Nyetimber.
With over 60 stalls lining the pretty harbour the two-day event draws visitors from not only around the UK but international ones too.
The huge selection of locally caught seafood is on offer to the tourists and local residents who often come year after year.
The largest free seafood festival in the UK. The Nyetimber bus at the Dorset Seafood Festival.
In an effort to ensure that sustainability is the key to the event and the Sea Fish organisation was there in numbers to help spread the message to customers and encourage them to search out different species from what tend to be popular here in the UK, like cod and haddock for example.
Featuring fresh locally caught sustainable and diverse ranges of seafood.
Experts in fishing itself and fishmongers are on hand to pass on their knowledge either face to face or in various talks and demonstrations throughout the weekend.
Crack a crab…lessons at the largest free seafood festival in the UK.
You can fine tune your filleting skills for instance by seeing Duncan Lucas a fishmonger from Camberly in Surrey who can fillet a fish in many different ways and can remove all the guts of a flat fish and leave it so it’s a water proof pocket!
Duncan Lucas has great knowledge of filleting fish and is very entertaining at the Nyetimber seafood festival in the UK.
He also helps with the very popular fish auction where fish donated to the event is auctioned off to raise money for the Fishermen’s Mission. This is a charity that supports the fishermen and their families if they come on hard times due to injury or even sadly too often lost at sea!
Many celebrity and TV chefs appear on the demonstration stage at the seafood festival. Top London restaurant owner and chef Mark Hixs appeared this year and is anyway a regular and very popular at the event.
Mitch Tonks at the largest free seafood festival in the UK. He is opening a new Rockfish restaurant in the town too!
Mitch Tonks who is so delighted with the town and the sea fish that is landed in the resort. So much so that he has put his money where his mouth is. He will be opening up on the seafront ‘Rockfish Weymouth’ next month.
Inside the Nyetimber bus at the largest free seafood festival in the UK.
The harbour becomes a haven for the expensive motor yachts that pack the port so their owners and guests can enjoy what is the UK’s largest free seafood festival each mid-July.
Enjoying the festival on a motor yacht in the harbour at the seafood festival.
Locally and sustainably caught fish gets turned into dishes from around the globe with far eastern curries, spicy Caribbean fish stew, almost being served side by side with paellas and washed down with an award winning English Sparkling wine.
River Cottage foraging expert John Wright at the largest free seafood festival in the UK.
Although most wine experts would pair it with less fierce ingredients. However, there are literally hundreds of other dishes on offer around the harbour that would pair perfectly with them. Fresh oysters, scallops, clams joined by crab and lobster fresh and landed in the port at places like Wey Fish bang on the harbour at custom Quay.
Sunday Telegraph wine writer Susy Atkins tasting Nyetimber Rose at the largest free seafood festival in the UK.
Nyetimber produces a range of wines from their Sussex base and south of their England vineyards including a Classic Cuvee, a sparkling Rose and a Cuvee Cherie, demi sec version, which was my favourite.
Nigel Bloxham local restaurant owner and chef has just picked up top awards for food and service at those.
“The aim of the event is to showcase the quality and diversity of locally caught seafood,” said the festival Director Brian Cooper.
