Brighton FoodStory is bringing food, stories and some big conversations to the city, with a mission to rethink how Brighton feeds itself
Gilly Smith has been thinking about putting on a food festival in Brighton for 27 years. The idea first landed in 1998, when the food writer, journalist, author and podcaster visited a festival in Melbourne and found a curated market showcasing some of the city’s most interesting restaurants, with chefs cooking live on a stage through its centre.
“I said to Jed [her husband, journalist and editor of the Brighton Beat], that’s what we’re going to do in Brighton,” she tells BOTI.
At the time, Gilly had only recently moved here from London and Brighton’s food scene was rather different to what is now. “Food wasn’t exciting in Brighton,” she says. The festival remained an idea while Gilly spent the next three decades writing, broadcasting and podcasting about food, collecting awards and accolades along the way.
Now, finally, she’s doing it. Running from Friday 2nd – Sunday 4th October, Brighton Food Story is bringing together chefs, restaurateurs, growers, producers, campaigners and home cooks. The main event takes place on Saturday 3rd October, when New Road becomes Food Street, alongside a day of talks and discussions at Redroaster.
There’ll be plenty to eat, of course, but Gilly’s bigger ambition is to spread the stories behind our food: who grows and produces it, where it comes from and what impact it has. And, ultimately, she wants those stories to start conversations about how Brighton could build a more sustainable, resilient and circular local food economy.
Putting the story back into food
Gilly’s work has immersed her in conversations around farming, climate, health, animal welfare and food security. But these discussions, she tells us, often stay within relatively specialist circles.
“I just wanted to bust that open,” she says. FoodStory is her attempt to do exactly that, connecting people with the farmers, growers, fishers, chefs and producers behind what they eat, while tackling some trickier questions around factory farming, meat consumption and farmed salmon.
She wants people to realise they have some agency as customers, too. She’d be happy if someone went into a restaurant after the festival and asked a simple question: “Where do you get your meat, fish and dairy from?”
“To be fearless, you’ve got to have those conversations,” she says.
Oysters, beans and some uncomfortable questions
Then there are the things many of us simply don’t know about our food. Take oysters, for example. Riddle & Finns will be serving them on Food Street, but Gilly has another reason for wanting them there.
“We need to be eating more molluscs,” she tells us.
Oysters and mussels are among the more sustainable forms of animal protein and, as filter feeders, can benefit the waters they grow in. Gilly describes molluscs – and beans – as “magic food” and wants the festival to produce those penny-dropping moments when people discover something about their dinner they’d never considered. (We can confirm the oyster revelation works. We had no idea of how sustainable they are either.)
Food security is another big part of the conversation. When we ask why, after 27 years, she’s launching the festival now, Smith’s first answer is simple: “Because it’s time”.
Then she brings up Super El Niño and the potential impact increasingly volatile weather could have on harvests in countries Britain relies on for imported food.
“We have to be food secure,” she says. “We have to create a local food economy in our own cities.”
Her vision includes growing more beans and pulses on the South Downs and council-owned farmland and getting more locally produced food into Brighton’s schools.
“We’ve got the sea, we’ve got the South Downs. We’ve got it all.”
Food Street takes over New Road
On Saturday, those ideas are becoming considerably more edible.
The confirmed Food Street line-up features some of Brighton and Hove’s finest, including At The Table Deli, Real Junk Food, La Cantina and Gente de Mezcal, Palmito, Pitfield Veg, CookBookBake, Curing Rebels, Riddle & Finns, Savvy Ferments, Casa Azul, Brighton & Hove Food Partnership with Sussex Grazed, Brighton Gin, Kindly and Bayit Bagels.
Alongside it, Redroaster’s terrace is hosting an all-day (10am – 5.50pm) free-entry Radical Discussions programme, tackling everything from food in schools to hospitality and how to create a stronger local food economy.
There are some big names joining the conversation too. Riverford organic veg box founder Guy Singh-Watson will talk about the local food economy, while chef Tom Kerridge is contributing a special video to a discussion on VAT and the pressures facing hospitality. Geetie Singh-Watson, activist and founder of The Bull in Totnes, is joining the Radical Restaurants discussion, with contributors from The Food Foundation and Compassion in World Farming also on the programme.
Other sessions include Magic Beans, What’s on the Plate for the Next Generation?, and viral trend of the moment, Nonnamaxxing. The day kicks off with a screening of The National Emergency Briefing on the climate and nature crisis before the talks get underway. You can see the full line-up here.
It’s the ideas-led part of Food Story made very literal: eat something good on New Road, then find out a little more about the system that put it there.
Brighton’s food stories around the table
But the storytelling isn’t confined to New Road. It continues with six long-table community supper clubs running across the weekend. These are:
The Seasonal Table at Café Rust (Friday; £35) – a four-course dinner exploring seasonality, community and a fairer food future hosted by Laura Karall and Amaryllis Therminot (in collaboration with FareShare Sussex). More information here
Chef Kanthi’s Culinary Tale of Twin States dinner at The Spice Circuit Kitchen inspired by the regional cuisines of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (Friday; 6.30pm; email hello@chefkanthi.com to book – put ‘BRIGHTONFOODSTORIES’ in the subject line)
The Wandering Table, an intimate Friday-night (7pm) supper inspired by host Suzanne Goldenberg’s grandmother Rose and her journey from Baku through Persia and the Levant to Israel (email Suzannegoldenberg@hotmail.com to book and put ‘WANDERING TABLE’ in the subject line)
From Syria to Hove, with Love, a closing night dinner with Chef Tony (@Abuellaias) serving a seven-course Syrian feast at Scotties Café on Sunday 4th October (5pm; £35; email abuellaias@gmail.com or WhatsApp 07833 246102 to book)
Chef, author and founder Gemma Ogston’s plant-based feast at Canopy – designed to nourish mental wellbeing and champion local seeasonal ingredients (Friday; 7pm; £50)
Delhi, a multi-course dinner from academic, author, chef and Maharani Supper Club founder Priya Deshingkar that explores the history, spices and street-food memories of old Delhi (Saturday; 7pm; £37.50)
The supper clubs are an important part of what Gilly means by “food story” The idea was partly inspired by an experience she had at a food festival in York, eating in the home of a Chinese family and hearing their stories, and a six-part series she later made with Syrian families in Brighton exploring food, music and memories.
Here, recipes and meals become a way into stories about migration, memory, family, place and community.
“A vision of how Brighton could be”
Remarkably, Gilly tells us the first Brighton FoodStory has been put together without sponsorship. Much of the festival is free, while the independently organised supper clubs sell their own tickets.
She hopes it will become an annual fixture, returning on the first weekend of October.
For this debut one, though, she has a very particular image in mind. “I want to stand at the end of New Road and I want to look down that road and see a vision of how Brighton could be,” she says.
She pictures the street buzzing with food, packed terraces, people listening to talks and, importantly, debating what they’ve heard.
After 27 years, Smith is finally getting the food festival she imagined for Brighton. The bigger hope is that we all come away knowing a little more about the story behind what we eat.
