Jim Hagarty
Editor
When Danielle Brodhagen was travelling through Europe last summer, she came across beautiful open-air markets in small towns in Wales and France with special areas for tasting food and wine.

And she asked herself why such events couldn’t be held in Stratford.

Well, just such a festival was held for the first time last weekend and the results were remarkable by any standards.

For the first time on Saturday, vendors from the Stratford Farmers’ Market set up their tables on Veterans’ Drive along the Avon River and the response was electric. In fact, the comment heard most often the next day was that it was too bad the market shut down at noon and didn’t stay open longer. The vendors, combined with the venues where barbecues offering various kinds of meat, attracted an estimated 5,000 people before 2 p.m. alone.

The next day, the barbecue booths were less busy but a huge tasting tent erected in the York Street parking lot was filled with people eager to get a taste of the offerings from 30 restaurants and beer companies.

For her part, Brodhagen was ecstatic with the response. A former Fosters Inn employee who had helped out at the similar Common Ground event at McCully’s Hill Farm near St.  Marys last year, she is now the program development coordinator for Stratford Tourism Alliance. She took her idea of a culinary festival here to Tourism Alliance executive director Eugene Zakreski and he told her to go for it.

So, for six months, she tackled the job of planning the event but as people heard about what she was doing, she started getting calls with offers of help and ended up with a committee of six people.

“It’s pretty remarkable that this is happening,” she said on Sunday. “Everyone is doing this for free.
All the chefs’ time, the products, the musicians. It’s incredible.”

The Savour Stratford Culinary Festival had to be a two-day event, explained Brodhagen, as many of the Farmers’ Market vendors don’t work Sundays and the local chefs are too busy with their own restaurants to attend a festival on Saturday.

Cathy Rehberg, marketing coordinator of Stratford Tourism Alliance, said the idea behind pairing 30 chefs with 30 local producers was to promote local food to the public but also to encourage restaurants to use local produce. The free part of the event, besides the traditional pork, other meats such as bison and elk were introduced to those who took in the event.

Local flavour was also provided by the musicians who entertained, all of whom have some connection with Perth County, having either grown up here or who live here now.

Rehberg said the most frequent comment she hear was about how nice it would be if the Farmers’ Market was held along the river every week.

In the tasting tent on Sunday, the reaction of some of the tasters was effusive.

“It’s perfect, a great idea,” said one woman. “I’m speechless. It’s fabulous. It’s great to see so many people downtown.”

Another woman called the event “absolutely phenomenal” while a third, who had just moved back to Stratford from Ottawa, was impressed with how well-organized the event was.

“It’s good to see the local restaurants,” she added. “There are phenomenal restaurants here.”

As with others, her only complaint about the weekend was the fact that the Farmers’ Market had to wrap up at noon.

“They were missed when they were gone,” she said.

One of the most popular stands in the tent was the one presented by the Stratford Chefs School which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Perth-Wellington MPP John Wilkinson called the event “wonderful” and remarked that Savour Stratford brings together the best culture in the world and the best food, grown on the most productive land anywhere.

Eugene Zakreski said he was thrilled with the turnout to the event which he attributed, in part, to the great fall weather, and with the participation by the business community.

“We’re very interested in getting as many visitors to Stratford as possible,” he said, “ but this was something for the community, something we don’t always get a chance to do.”

He said he expects the event will be repeated next year.

PHOTO: Danielle Brodhagen is shown outside the special tasting tent in the York Street parking lot Sunday. The program development co-ordinator with Tourism Stratford pitched the idea of the two-day culinary festival to Tourism Stratford and was given the job of organizing it. (Jim Hagarty)