The last couple of weeks have felt like summer has officially started with the crazy hot and sometimes humid weather.
My family came to Brum to watch South Africa’s defeat against New Zealand in the cricket down at Edgbaston, and as that’s not really my thing so I took the dog for a long walk and brunch!
We walked from the Jewellery Quarter to Boston Tea Party as I knew they were dog friendly and we had the Full English along with some iced drinks. They do an avocado iced mocha which is delightful! The staff are really friendly and even more so when you bring an adorable pooch along!
After brunch we headed to Cafe Artum as we just wanted somewhere to chill and this is literally the best place in town to take a moment out of busy life, listen to the music, have a coffee and zone out!
My little buddy isn’t the most energetic of dogs so we headed home to rest up before a busy weekend ahead!
We attended the Foodies Festival for the second year running and it was SO good! This is perhaps my favourite food festival in Birmingham as it has a really good mix of food stalls, street food, entertainment, demonstrations from amazing chefs and if you’re lucky, sunshine! We got very lucky with the weather as the Saturday was an absolute scorcher!
We arrived at Cannon Hill Park for 12:50pm, checked in and went straight for the demonstration by Chef Brad Carter (of the Michelin-starred Carters of Moseley) who did an amazing pork dish which only had about five different ingredients in it but was superbly cooked!
After the demo we headed to Cranes for a big cold cider to walk around the stalls with, and they did not disappoint! They offered us sampled before I settled for the blueberry cider, we played some ping pong and then headed off into the stalls for more samples!
The more we walked along the tipsier we became! There were an awful lot of gin samples going around which put us in a very jolly mood! We had a little sit down, another drink, and then headed off to watch Glynn Purnell in the chef’s tent for his demonstration. The man is a comedian! It was by far the most entertaining fish demonstration I’ve ever seen and of course we got a little taster at the end!
I didn’t actually manage to sample a lot of food for a food festival but I think that was by choice. I didn’t want to get that ‘food coma’ feeling so had little bites like calamari and triple-cooked fries along the way. If you haven’t been to the festival you definitely need to! It’s an annual do, popping up around June time. For more pictures of how I’m spending my summer, head to my personal page @mischkefredericks or my food page @misffood.
So far I’ve also managed to squeeze in a meal at The Wilderness and a crazy night out… but I’ll leave that for the next blog!
-Mischke