RJIE: Good Food and Wine Show 2014

I got invited to the Good Food and Wine Show this year! I got a media pass to cover the event! You're probably thinking why did they do that considering she hasn't updated her blog in like two weeks, who knows! Maybe its cause they knew I can crank out a blog post in like 2 hours under pressure hahaha. I didn't get invited to any of the pre-GFWS events this year, which I was a bit sad about. Also every food blogger I knew on Instagram received food pack from Ilias the Greek, I shall remember this slight!

I had to print out an email and hand it in at the information desk before being tagged with this little paper bracelet. It did have a number on it and stuff to make it official. My media pass was valid for al three days! Also I got free reign to all the shows.

Oh hey that's me.

The first place I checked out was this Thank You Company stand, they're a social enterprise that give back the money they raised to helping international rural communities. They sell bottled water, food products such as muesli and protein bars as well as skin care products, these go towards clean water/supplies, food production and healthcare products/education respectively. The guys there were really nice, and Kayla, I think her name was, had a really good chat with me about the whole venture before we got side tracked and started talking about food recommendations.

It turns out the entire group is from Melbourne so they were wondering where they should go for dinner that night. I highly recommended West End since it was within walking distance!

Nice!

This is the british sausage company! You can find their goods at Woolworths, their boerewors, a 90% beef and friends such as lamb or pork, spiced sausage from South Africa, is pretty good but I've definitely had better.

Pretty good price though!

My goal for the day was really to check out new interesting products, to photograph things I wanted to buy later on when I had to return to my car, since they can get quite heavy and to post up what food was available at the GFWS this year. I tried these sauces and forgot to buy them both times I headed out to my car, I found the hickory smoked rib sauce to be particularly delicious.

Sauce time!

I found this little stall from Merbye Farms, they sold super sweet, low acidity fresh pineapple pieces, juices, virgin pina coladas for pineapple juice spritzers for $3-4 each! I had a juice here later on and the juice was so delicious!

So good!

I got drawn in by these guys who were selling an alternative to pasta! It was made from this root vegetable called konjac, 100g of the stuff only equals 8 calories which is basically a diet miracle. As its made from vegetables, it also is gluten free and low in carbohydrates in general. The girl I was chatting to said this was the first release of the food to the general public and as long as you signed up to their mailing list, you could get their free sample pack!

The nutritional comparison to other top brands

Oooh lasagne sheets!

There a ridiculous amount of brownie/macaron stalls this year! Last year was more about superfoods/spices but this year its all sweets!

You know how I feel about sweets!

Oooh! This was one of my picks for the show. So there's this stall called the Illawara Alpaca Company, they raise alpacas for wool and food! Alpaca meat is very high in protein/iron and low in fats and cholesterol, one 100g serve of alpaca meat contains 25g of protein, 6g of fat and about 60g of cholesterol, pretty much on par with pink salmon. The taste is a bit like the texture of lamb with all the fat, which is pretty enticing, it has a bit of a gamey flavour to it as well.

I had some of their alpaca pate on a little baguette! You know I love pate~ this one had a very interesting flavour and I didn't know what to expect. It was a very strong gamey flavoured pate with a hint of a blue cheese tang, I think if you liked the flavours of blue cheese and game meats, this would be perfect for you. That being said, its a quite strong flavour combination, so I don't think it would be appealing for many people. It was a very interesting experience though!

Intriguing

Their little jars!

Weeny jars!

This is my alpaca kofta! It was a dense ball of intensely flavoured mince, I found it to be very well seasoned, slightly spicy with Middle Eastern spices I couldn't identify in the flavour, the texture was springy and very moreish. I had some chimichurri sauce on it as well which was quite refreshing. I like it so much, I bought a tray of the stuff! I can't wait to try it! Even before they defrosted, you could smell the spiciness of the mixture through the ice which was interesting.

Yay!

My favourite haloumi, Olympus haloumi, wised up this year and weren't handing out unlimited free samples of their haloumi. Instead, they were selling them for $5 for 2 slices!

There was another place selling haloumi, 3 sisters greek cafe

This is about the time I entered Cheese Alley. I got to try some of Ashgrove Wild Wasabi cheese! Its a Tasmanian cheese and that strong, nose clearing blast of wasabi flavour to it. I liked it!

Give it a crack!

I fully intended to come back to this place and buy crackers. It never happened, I forgot to buy cheese too. I forgot my freezer bag at home so I was pretty reluctant to buy another one there.

Man crackers and cheese is the best snack ever

I located this guy! I've been seeing him giving food packs to every other food blogger in Brisbane besides me! They were selling freshly made honey puffs, baklava, lots of different flavours of halva and a few other things I can't remember.

They were handing out free samples as well

Their excellent display

This was an absolutely gorgeous display by cocoa elf, they do lots of interesting flavours of brownies and can make wedding towers for you. The top display was of whatever the components of the flavours were, so for examples salted caramel had copious amounts of sea salt flakes and caramel squares before a layer of brownies.

Really colourful and artistic display, I really enjoyed it!

I liked their packaging too, perfect bite sized pieces.

Excellent present idea :D?

I tried out every flavour of this Rochester Ginger range, from left to right it was a plain ginger, lemon lime and ginger, a syrupy dark ginger and then a mulled orange wine and ginger of course. Honestly the strongest ginger flavoured on the market, if you love a strong, refreshing and bitey ginger flavoured, this is your drink. I think the only other available comparison in intensity of flavour is Fever Tree's ginger beer/ale range. If you love ginger flavoured drinks, check out this range.

$18/bottle or $30 for 2 bottles

Jordan's crunchy oat clusters were really good as well. I feel like I'm saying a lot of things were really good but they were! The ones that weren't good didn't even warrant a mention haha. They were handing out little cups of their muesli clusters, they had a nice diverse muesli range and some delicious dried fruit pieces as well. I had a try of their strawberry crispy oat clusters and I liked that it had a high amount of fruit in it, the best! There's nothing worse than stingy fruit in your muesli.

Yay!

Their happy little family

So this was a little Korean stand of Bellich fruit drinks with real fruit pieces. It was a slightly thick, syrupy drink with a quite sweet flavour and soft pieces of fruit. It reminded me a lot of bubble tea in terms of sweetness and the chunkiness of the fruit reminded me of another Korean brand called Yoosh which do aloe vera flavoured drinks. This was one of the stalls that I thought was quite poorly marketed, it didn't have a visible show special, no engaging displays and it wasn't immediately obvious that you could just wander up and try a sample.

Tasty though!

I forgot to take a better photo, but Elk cider had a good show special on! They have much crisper/drier flavour than a lot of other flavours I've tried.

Nice

I liked the 333 brand of sauces, really classic Aussie flavours that go down well at your next barbie! I picked up the mushroom sauce as well as the burger/steak sauce ones.

Lovely flavours

Should have grabbed the sauce box

Pukhara estate have an excellent stall every year! They seemed to be the only place selling dukkah this year though, last year I recall there being 4-5 stalls selling various dukkah. I picked up their roasted onion and cashew dukkah!

Great dukkah!

There was a little section dedicated to Lockyer Valley produce and I really enjoyed the chocolate range from Seat On Fire Chocolate, who specialised in chilli chocolate and have branched out into other things. Their sea salt and rosemary dark chocolate was delicious, that unctuous, thick, oily, dark flavoured with the crispness and clarity of sea salt with the fragrance of rosemary! They were thinly flaked too, so they just melted away so quickly on the tongue.

Perfect for chocolate lovers!

Silverwood Organic lamb was giving out samples of some of the best lamb I've ever had. I had a perfect medium rare piece that just melted on my tongue and it had that perfect lamb flavour with the smell. Oh god, I moaned a little when I ate it. The only shame about the whole thing was that you had to buy A LOT of lamb to get any, their smallest pack is $165.

Such good lamb <3

The Burger Bar also selling these excellent sauces from the Saucy Sisters. I found the first two on the left quite sweet, but the harissa relish was delicious, smokey, sweet and with a good heat. Perfect for my next burger!

Harissa relish is my pick btw.

Nitrogenie had a stall this year! A lot of children were gathered around watching the billows of liquid nitrogen pour out over the stand haha.

Nice!

There was one vanilla specialist this year, they didn't appear last year and it was Singing Dog Vanilla! I bought two jars of their vanilla bean paste at 120g each which was an absolute bargain.

Yum!

DiBella have launched a new espresso martini premixed range which is extremely dangerous to everyone who likes alcohol or coffee. I don't like either very much and I found this to be a dangerously drinkable combination.

Danger Will Robinson!

I signed up to the Nespresso special moments class! This year it was run by Justine Schofield from Masterchef and also with the TV show, she was cooking with coffee this year. The three dishes that we had were a coffee infused yoghurt, crunchy muesli and blueberry dish, then a goats cheese, onion and coffee tartlet and lastly a hazelnut praline, vanilla Movenpick icecream and espresso affogado.

My placement!

My Nespresso machine and milk frother

The recipe card!

Not a plug, but it was a pretty cool class

Feeling stalkerish here

I drank a lot of coffee

Affogado is delicious if disgusting looking, I probably shouldn't have eaten some before the pic

I went for another quick round of the show as my parking was getting ready to expire. I foolishly went near the Butter Factory from Myrtleford, they were selling really, really, really delicious cultured butter slathered on biscuits. They were lots of flavours and the butter was so delicious, I couldn't buy any because I'm pretty sure I'd just eat it straight out of the tub like a super weirdo.

This butter. So good.

Stay away! Its too good for the likes of us hissssss

This is the second Korean stand that was there. Its Woomtree Corporation! I actually own most of the stuff in this picture, like the panko crumb, gochujang paste and bulgogi sauce. It was a pretty display but just like the other Korean stall, it didn't have any clear information and wasn't particularly enticing unless you know what you were already getting. All this stuff are things you have to cook to eat so its a bit hard to sample.

I had to repark my car, so I sat down in the Convention Centre hallway to recharge my phone and Instagram like crazy. That's when my camera dropped below 50% battery which is the stage where it stops allowing me to Wifi my own photos over. 50% is such a terribly high number for a limit, its a massive pain in the butt.

I should buy a second camera battery . . .

Nudie had an absolutely massive stand this year. They've also released a line of fruit juice based sodas that taste like diet sugarless drinks. If you're into that stuff, check it out I guess.

These guys!

I love Ceres juices, just like last year I picked up lychee sensation!

Nice

Great juice range

My mum loves Riccadonna Asti, its her favourite white wine and its super cheap. Just putting it out there.

This stuff!

Here is the start what you can actually eat for a meal at GFWS! There's nothing worse than jumping the gun at a food event and getting food envy when you spot something better! So here is a quick glance at what was available. This year seemed to focus more on food trucks and quick eats. Last year was all Maggie Beer restaurant dishes and the previous year was hatted meals from memory.

There was a place selling freshly fried arancini balls and mixed olives for $5! The lady selling was very suspicious of me when I took a photo of the menu. She wasn't really mollified either when I said that I was keeping a record of what was available to eat as a meal.

Nice~

Of course there was a German sausage place! They sold grilled wurst with sauerkraut and your choice of sauces on a roll. That being said, it was an extra $1.50 for 5 pack to take home and cook yourself, for me that isn't even a choice really.

Bulk is always cheaper I guess!

This was a simple no frills burger bar with either a cheese burger or a chicken schnitty burger with fries!

Doing a good trade every time I walked past

Of course, Ilias the Greek was selling freshly cooked honey puffs. I just realised writing this that I completely forgot to take a photo of the Three Sisters stand.

This place!

Movenpick had a section where you could buy a scoop and get one free, as long as you liked them on Facebook!

Niceee

Salumi always sell lots of meats as well. Chorizo on a stick and a mini meat tornado, both for $5 each!

Aw yiss

Meat tornado

The food trucks were mostly at the very back of the entire place. This Curry n Spice van was pretty much ignored.

So sad

Bun Mobile was popular as usual.

Massive lines

Siguenos were selling tacos and other Mexican foods! 

Nice~

That BBQ Joint were ridiculous popular, they ran out of their pulled pork in three hours on the first day.

I wonder what that pulled pork tasted like . . .

The Chocolate Komberry van were selling their cronuts as usual!

Commonly seen at Eat Street Markets

My wonderful pineapple juice vendors again!

Sooo good

I went home soon after this and this was my stash of food, roughly $95 all up. This year I felt there were lots and lots of random diet drinks, not as much spices or Asian foods. I think if you go this year, definitely check out the alpaca stand, cultured butter, Dibella espresso and the pineapple juice stand!