Month: August 2025

A former executive chef with Gordon Ramsey and a celebrity expert in Chinese cooking are just two of the top chefs appearing at this month’s free-admission Our Bury St Edmunds Food & Drink Festival across the town centre.

Taking place in Suffolk’s Foodie Capital on the Sunday and Monday of the bank holiday weekend, it offers a menu to please all palates.  The Chefs on Stage Cookery Theatre will host demonstrations from some of the area’s favourite establishments with celebrity chef Ching-He Huang MBE creating a stir in the kitchen across the day on the Monday. Ching has hosted ‘Chinese Food Made Easy’ for the BBC as well as ‘Exploring China – A Culinary Adventure’ with Ken Hom and participated in many other favourites including ‘Saturday Kitchen’.

On the first day of the festival popular local restaurants 1921, ICE, Giggling Squid, Rustico and Bellota will all be sharing their kitchen secrets.  The Wine Cellar will also be hosting a demonstration and the day will start with great tips on avoiding food waste from local chef Rowen Halstead known as Waste Not Rowen.

Ching-He Huang will be making three appearances on stage on Bank Holiday Monday in between demonstrations of food and cocktails from Bay Tree Café and The Angel Hotel respectively. Also in the kitchen on Monday will be Steve Allen who is executive chef at Cote overseeing the group’s 70 restaurants and former executive chef to Gordon Ramsey.

The Our Bury St Edmunds Food & Drink Festival is organised by the Business Improvement District (BID) organisation for the town.  Our Bury St Edmunds BID Chief Executive Mark Cordell said: “We’ve got a stellar line-up in the kitchen this year and are very much looking forward to welcoming Ching-He Huang.  She won’t just be demonstrating that Chinese cooking doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming but if her fans bring along copies of any of her books, she will be happy to sign them too.  The two branches of Waterstones in the town both stock her books so getting hold of a copy couldn’t be easier. 

“Of course, as with all our events we have plenty going on throughout the town centre for all ages to enjoy. As well as the Farmers’ Market, the fairground rides and a wide range of stalls offering food and drink from around the world, our many hospitality businesses in the town will also look forward to welcoming visitors.”

The festival offers a number of other attractions to help all the family work up an appetite including children’s entertainment, mini-golf, a helter-skelter and other family-focussed activities all based at arc Shopping Centre.  Full details about the event, which runs from 10am to 5pm on Sunday 24 and Monday 25 August, can be found at: www.ourburystedmunds.com/foodanddrinkfestival. 

The August Bank Holiday weekend is a real highlight for our town as residents and visitors alike enjoy the Our Bury St Edmunds Food & Drink Festival.  Although Bury St Edmunds is known as the foodie capital of Suffolk, the number of towns in the county holding food and drink events like this has grown since our festival was first held in 2012.  Healthy competition like this means standards remain high and we continue to offer new and different attractions at this event.  Our ever changing food and drink offering in the town centre is testament to that, as this year we saw new restaurant Bellota taking to the stage alongside a number of festival favourites too. 

We also had several BID member businesses using a stall over the two days to engage with visitors and others opening over the weekend to welcome festival-goers.

The annual Beer Festival also takes place over the same weekend at the Cathedral, bringing more people into the town and complements the Food & Drink Festival very well.  We hope that some of the visitors at that event will also take the opportunity to find out about the Our Bury St Edmunds Ale Trail and perhaps return to visit some of the establishments that are part of the trail.  Next month Hopsters will be opening in the town offering craft beers and it’s good to see the premises formerly housing Secret Distillery didn’t stand empty for too long.  

The momentum of new businesses opening continues as the beauty and wellbeing store Rituals is advertising for a manager and assistant manager for their new branch in the town.  Meanwhile other recent arrivals Sugartown Toys and PrimaVista are both now accepting the Our Bury St Edmunds Gift Card.  If your business is yet to sign up to accepting the card, but you’d like to know more, please do get in touch with the BID team.

Gift cards are the prizes in our current and second history trail of the year, which has been proving popular during the summer holidays.  It marks the 80^th anniversary of VJ Day, and the town was honoured to welcome the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester to a special service commemorating VJ Day earlier this month.  In America VJ Day is recognised on September 2 so we will be running the trail until September 7 to ensure that the trail is also relevant for families from our local US Air Force bases.

Finally, our Business Support Manager at the BID, Mike Kirkham, has reached new heights in his career this month.  He was one of dozens of brave fundraisers to abseil down the Cathedral Tower to raise money for children’s hospice charity EACH.  A unique fundraising initiative and well done to all who took part.