Culy Food Festival, Sugarcity

The Culy Food Festival was hosted by a Dutch food website culy.nl and was a chance for foodies to come together and try new things. My friend and I thought it'd be nice to check it out, so we got tickets to head here. You had to buy tickets for entrance and could participate in several workshops as well as giving you access to various stalls who were there selling their food. You were required to buy tokens to be able to purchase the food. The workshops were imediatelly full, so sadly enough I wasn't able to participate in any, even though I really wanted to do the food photography workshop. This was very disappointing.

Probably our favorite stall in the food festival, the Cereal Killer Cafe all the way from Bricklane in London. They specialize in many different types of cereal, which you don't find very often.

They had several home favorites from which you could choose, or you could also create your own mix. You were able to choose two types of cereal, one topping and a flavored milk. We opted to make our own mix. We chose a cinnamon cereal, a chocolate cereal, oreos as topping and vanilla milk to go with that. I really liked our mix and the people at the Cereal Killer Cafe were really nice and let us try a lot of their different flavors. Can't wait to go to London and check out their actual store, think I'd go a bit crazy then.

We also shared a hotdog from Brandt & Levie, an artisan butcher from the Netherlands. We asked them to cut it in half, which is why you only see half on the picture above (not that they sold half hotdogs). We ordered the Naaktdog - Hotdog with Mustard, Chipotle Ketchup and Fried Onions. The sauces were delicious and the hotdog wasn't dry and actually quite tasty on its own. I usually don't really like hotdogs, but I wouldn't mind having another one of these actually.

A lot of people were queuing for these, so we thought we'd try it out too. It was 4 different types of Labne with Turkish Bread. I wasn't too sure what each individual labne had. But I remember there was one with tomato, one with pomegranate, one with cumin seeds and the last I wasn't too sure about anymore. We really enjoyed the tomato one and the pomegranate one, the other two were also good, but I think the refreshing bite the fruits brought to the labne helpt lighten it up a bit and offered a different flavor profile.

From &Samhoud there were also the Tomeato Burgers, which I got to try, since my friend got one. The burger is completely vegetarian as the patty is made of tomato. Upon trying it I was completely surprised. I didn't expect it to be so good, and was actually very tasty. It also resembled meat so much, that it wasn't missed at all. These burgers are also available in the local supermarket as well as other vegetable meat-replacement products they've made.

Going back to my Asian roots, I really wanted to get one of these baos. This was a Roasted Pork Bao with Peanuts, Coriander and a Pickle. The sauce on this resembled that of Hoisin and was ever as addicting as I hope for. The bao was also freshly steamed and soft, so this was the perfect Asian fix.

Before heading to the train, to go home, I wanted to grab a salad. At this salad bar you picked your own vegetables, according to this little card you got, from a little green house and then gave them to the chefs who would prepare it for you. Recently eating insects has become the new thing in the Netherlands, as they're said to be very nutritious. So it was also an option to get these as a topping for your salad. Feeling adventurous I said why not, and the chef proceeded to add spoons full of bugs to my salad. As you can see in the picture above there were quite some creepy crawlies in my salad. At some point it did get a bit too much though, but I think I ate the majority of them.

The labne was probably the most photogenic of all the food there so I just have to add another picture. The festival had many more stalls, but we didn't get the chance to try them all. Partly because it was quite pricy and because we couldn't eat that much. The price thing was quite a thing though. One token cost you 1.50 Euros and you had to buy it in sets of 10. Items were at least 3 tokens (small items) and even then you only got small portions. Considering that you already had to buy a ticket to get entry, and didn't really receive anything for that, except access to the venue and workshops (which were immediately full and so couldn't attend), it wasn't really worth it. It was a nice outing and enjoyed spending it with my friend, but it really wasn't up to par for a food festival. Hopefully in the future they'll make something more substantial.

#netherlands #food #festival #review