It was a near sell-out crowd last weekend at the Enjoy Centre as almost 1,000 people turned out for a festival of local food.
About 933 people came to the Enjoy Centre last Oct. 27 for the first annual Sturgeon Valley Food and Wine Festival. The event, meant to promote local food, featured four food and 17 drink vendors from the St. Albert region.
It was a big hit, said organizer and Sturgeon County resident Shani Gwin.
“The ambiance of the Enjoy Centre really added to the evening,” she said.
City residents have wanted an event like this for some time, Gwin said.
“There are so many restaurants and different producers in St. Albert, and it’s difficult for people to get the word out and get people to come in and try them out,” she said.
Events like this give local businesses the chance to meet face-to-face with their customers, she said, and give residents a chance to have a good night out without heading to Edmonton.
About 300 people attended the afternoon session of the festival, Gwin said, with the rest coming to the sold-out one in the evening.
“There were a few things that didn’t work out as planned,” she said, but the event definitely let people have in-depth conversations with vendors.
It was a great success for its first run, said Kyle Iseke, owner of D’Arcy’s Meat Market, who served up bison chilli, prime rib stew and pulled pork sandwiches at the festival.
“There’s still people who say, ‘I didn’t know there was a butcher shop in St. Albert,’” he said, despite all the attention local food has received as a result of the E. coli crisis at XL Foods.
Events such as this help him connect with the customers and gourmands who want high-quality, locally produced meat, Iseke said.
“I’ve already had more people in my store afterwards,” he said.
He also appreciated the event’s focus on small, local businesses.
“When you go there, you felt like you’re part of the community,” he said.
Robert Logue of La Crema CaffĂ© was also there with food from his restaurant’s new smokehouse.
“We were jam-packed the whole night,” he said, with some guests lining up for more than an hour to get their food.
Logue said his restaurant gets a lot of exposure during the farmer’s market, but is still unknown to many city residents. This event was one of the few places a small restaurant like his could get this kind of publicity.
“We should have one downtown in the summertime,” he said.
The festival did need more vendors, Logue said, as it had a very limited selection of food, and a bit more effort made to match up wines with the available foods.
“I would give it an eight out of 10.”
Gwin said she was already planning next year’s festival, which would definitely have more wine and food. It would also have more people at the entrance booth in order to prevent the bottlenecking that happened this time.
Logue and Iseke said they would definitely be interested in doing an event like this again.
