Seven Highly Indulgent Food Festivals Happening Around Sydney This Month

The close ties between Italy and Australian can’t be ignored. Italians love pasta and wine, and we also love pasta and wine, after all. Accordingly, what better way to celebrate this joyful union than to head along to an Italian street festival on your Sunday.

Returning for 2018, Ferragosto will bring a solid dose of Italian culture, food and general entertainment to Sydney’s Five Dock on August 19, with food stalls hawking street eats and handmade goodness, as well as dance and music across five stages. Comedian James Liotta will headline — and if you’ve ever wished you were cruising across Florence on a vespa, there’ll be a bunch of fancy Italian vehicles on display.

Last year’s event drew more than 100,000 people, so it seems that the people of Sydney enjoy Italian culture a fair amount: and with this being Ferragosto’s 21st birthday, the obsession doesn’t seem to be fading.

You can never have too many occasions to eat cheese, but this new Sydney cheese festival isn’t just keen to shower cheese fiends with creamy goodness. A collaboration between Bruny Island Cheese Co. cheesemaker Nick Haddow and the organisers of Pinot Palooza, Mould wants dairy lovers to explore and devour the mild, hard and soft bites that Australia’s best cheese wizards have to offer.

After a successful first outing in Melbourne, the festival will make its way to Sydney for the first time on the weekend of September 1–2. Alongside unlimited tastings of Australia’s best cheeses — there will be over 80 types from the likes of Bruny Island, Yarra Valley Dairy, Stone & Crowe — it’ll feature flavoursome fare from cheese specialists too. Think of it as a cheese tasting trip around Australia without leaving Carriageworks.

Of course, snacking on samples and purchasing slices and slabs to take home with you are just two ways to enjoy cheese. The fest will have cooking demonstrations, masterclasses and talks so you can stretch your cheese knowledge as well as your cheese stomach. And it wouldn’t be a cheese festival without beverages to wash it all down with, so expect a bar serving Aussie wines, whisky, beer and sake — all of which match nicely to a bit of cheese. There will be two sessions: one running from 11am–4pm and the other from 5–9pm. Tickets cost $40, which includes tastings, classes, one free glass of vino and a wine glass to keep.

The bond between Italians and their food and wine is a sacred one, and with the Sydney Italian Wine + Food Festival, Sydneysiders are invited to partake in this holy combination. Get ready to abandon any carbless aspirations and embrace gloriously hearty nosh as this festival returns to Sydney. With it comes the promise of produce that will dance upon your tastebuds in a merry cheese and basil-infused tarantella.

This year, they’re setting up shop for the day at the Eveleigh’s Australian Technology Park for the first time and they’re bringing along some of the best names in Italian cuisine. Cooking demonstrations and talks will be on all day. Want to see mozzarella being freshly made? You can. Want to watch fettuccine be churned out from scratch? Go for it. As well as watching the creation of Italian food, you can also, of course, eat some. There will be fresh produce to purchase, with everything from gelato to coffee, pasta to pizza on offer.

The marketplace will host pop-up restaurants from some of Australia’s best chefs, including Via Napoli, Rocker, Lucio’s Pizzeria and Cow and Moon. There will also be a bruschetta station, serving up free slices of the tomato-topped toast all day. Pair that with over 150 of Italy’s finest wines and you’ve got yourself a damn good feast. Not to mention a casual spritz and negroni bar. Once you’ve eaten yourself silly, you can loll around in a semi-food coma in the wine garden while enjoying some live Italian jazz — or stay inside and watch ‘pizza acrobatics’.

You know that winter is coming to a close when the parties start spilling into the streets again. Case in point: Eat Your Heart Out Liverpool. On Saturday, August 25, the south west Sydney fiesta will return for the second year running. This time it’s coming to Railway Street and it’s bringing with it live music and performance, food, market stalls, carnival games and art.

If consuming all that music and art has left you with a raging hunger, you’ll be pleased to know that there’ll be food options galore. Dirty Bird, Berlin Bangers, Feast of the East and Dutch Poffertjes House are just a few of the food stalls that will roll into Liverpool, and local pub Macquarie Bistro will also be running a pop-up restaurant in a shipping container for the day. Or, opt for a ticketed Taste Tour for a guided tour of Liverpool’s best spots. The tours cost $60 per person and run from 1–3pm, so you’ll still have plenty of time to check out the rest of the market stalls and play with some giant lego from Garden Games afterwards.

There will also be performances by Thandi Phoenix, six-piece reggae band Manutabu, Gang of Brothers, The Strides and Turquoise Prince as well as dance troupe Shaun Parker and Co. Meanwhile, Sydney-based artist Melissa Carey will create a huge heart sculpture that will arch over Railway Street as the festival centrepiece.

Indulgence is an entire weekend dedicated to chocolate, and sometimes, that happens outside your own lounge room. Sydney’s two-day chocolate extravaganza, the Smooth Festival of Chocolate, returns for 2018, bringing together countless artisan chocolatiers, pastry chefs and ice creameries for a celebration of all things chocolate.

But this year it’s going to be a little different. Firstly, the festival is moving from Circular Quay to Sydney Olympic Park; secondly, it will be ticketed. The good part about that is that you won’t be jostling for treats with an infinite number of chocolate lovers, and you’ll automatically get access to all the exhibitors, cooking demonstrations and entertainment on the day.

Local favourites Black Star Pastry, The Peanut Butter Bar and Knafeh will be serving up their best, while multiple bars and wine sampling stations will keep you buzzing. Wine Selectors will even be teaching punters how to match their choccies with vino. One-day tickets are $23 and, for every one sold, the festival will donate two meals to OzHarvest. Expect a sweet weekend of decadence Willy Wonka himself would approve of.

Get ready to cosy up this winter at the Sydney Tea Festival. If you have a yearning for an Earl Grey or a passion for Russian Caravan, this event is sure to warm your cockles. When the festival opens at Carriageworks on Sunday, August 19, you’ll find all manner of tea-related talks, workshops and tastings to extend your appreciation of the finest brew.

One workshop, held by Ryan Gavin from Rockpool Group and sponsored by Archie Rose Distilling Co., will explore tea-inspired cocktails, and tell you how you can add some booze to your next tea party. In another, you’ll learn all about pairing your favourite beverage with cheese. Or, take sessions on everything from blending and brewing to Japanese green tea and Taiwanese Oolong — when you’re not trying four different blends of tea wine, that is.

There’ll also be plenty of stallholders showing their wares, a tasting table for small groups and a tea degustation dinner to celebrate the fest’s fifth birthday. Tickets range from $16.50 in advance to $20 on the door, and you should book ahead for the workshops and talks. Get ready to curl those frosty hands around a warm cuppa and escape Sydney’s winter chill.

The Taste of Coogee Food and Wine Festival has quickly become a prominent weekend on Sydney’s culinary calendar. Last year, over 40,000 attendees gathered at Coogee Oval to enjoy a glass of wine and a bite to eat by the ocean.

This year’s festival will coincide with the Father’s Day weekend, running over two days on September 1 and 2. Across the weekend attendees will savour nosh from a growing list of over 100 contributors, including Mr Bao, Sofrito Paella, Turkish Gözleme, Dust Bakery and Frencheese, the latter who’ll be serving up gooey, melted raclette. Beer, wine and spirit tastings will be conducted throughout the festival, too, by the likes of Batch Brewing Co., Yulli’s Brews, Peterson Champagne House, Aperol, Pokolbin Cider House and more. There’ll also be live entertainment — and entry is only a gold coin donation.