GET set for a foodie feast. Final plans for this year’s Bournemouth Food and Drink Festival can now be revealed.

And festival organisers are promising an event to remember. For what started as a small three-day trial last year, has now grown to a ten-day festival.

“We don’t like to do anything by halves,” says organiser Patrick Marmion. “There will be lots going on and we really hope lots of people will come along to support it.”

The foodie event launches on Thursday, June 20 at the Miramar Hotel with a Barons of Beef three-course meal organised by the Bournemouth Chamber of Trade and Commerce.

Bournemouth Square will become the festival hub from June 21 to June 30 with a Street Food Festival, a three-day World Food Market, a Mediterranean Day, a Trinidad and Tobago Caribbean Day, a Far East Day, a four-day Education Zone in partnership with Bournemouth and Poole College alongside eight Bournemouth schools, The Dorset Best Bloody Mary competition in association with the Bournemouth Bartenders’ league, a farmer and producers’ market, and a demonstration kitchen.

This year there will also be music in the Square on Monday and Tuesday evenings by Tinderbox and Bournemouth’s very own 21-year-old Phoebe Dykes.

Patrick adds: “This is the first time we will have had music in the evenings which we hope will encourage people to stay in the Square a bit longer and spend more time in the town centre shops.”

  • TO whet your appetite, here are a few highlights of the first weekend. On Saturday June 22 there will be a Caribbean Kitchen in Bournemouth Square from 10am to 10pm, with live steel pan music, story telling and models in masquerade costumes.

On Sunday, June 23 there will be a Far East Day from 10am to 10pm with pop up restaurants, Chinese lion dancing and drumming workshops.

To see the full schedule, visit bournemouthecho.co.uk