Launceston's Festivale

This weekend was Launceston's annual food and wine festival, "Festivale". Having heard quite a bit about it, we decided to check it out on Friday evening. The festival hosts over 70 stands offering a range of Tasmanian food, wine, beer, whiskey and cider, along with a range of live entertainment.

We arrived at about 6:30pm and despite quite a number of people entering the gates, we didn't have to queue for long at all (perhaps we are just used to Sydney queue standards).

We decided to start off with a glass of wine from "Wines for Joanie", before wandering around the stalls to choose some food for dinner.

It was pretty difficult trying to choose between the array of Tasmanian salmon, slow cooked lamb and pork, Angus beef sandwiches, Mexican meals, tempura mushrooms and local cheeses, but in the end we thought we'd share some pulled pork soft tacos from Mount Gnomon (Dave also chose a beef and caramelised onion burger from here) while I decided to get the slow cooked cider-infused lamb shoulder from The Lamb Baa.

We greatly enjoyed this food (along with some wine from Barringwood Wines) while sitting on the grass watching a father and son Russian acrobatic duo perform for the crowd (though at the end they disclosed to everyone in thick Aussie accents that they are actually born and bred Tasmanians).

We were pretty tempted by the range of dessert options at the festival, and I couldn't go past the Black Mountain ice cream stall, where I ordered the salted muscavado caramel and brownie & cream ice cream. Dave decided on a hazlenut and chocolate waffle from Hazlebrae Hazlenuts. Unfortunately I had a case of "too hungry to blog" so sadly I didn't get any pictures of the desserts. We then listened to some of the live music before stolling home around 10pm.

All up, it was a wonderful evening. I do think the entry fee of $20 per person was a little pricey (given that you have to pay for all food and drink inside anyway) but it is definitely worth checking out if you are ever visiting Launceston in February.