Celebrity Chefs To Attend Chester Food & Drink Festival

This year’s Chester Food & Drink Festival promises an even more impressive line up of celebrity chefs for visitors to the Festival Taste Marquee over Easter. Organisers have listened to the public who voted for more chefs at this year’s event and three celebrity chefs have been announced with three more to follow, doubling the number last year.

The celebrity chef line up so far includes Michael Caines for Monday 9th April. Michael is one of Britain's most acclaimed chefs. Since 1994, he has been based at Gidleigh Park, the prestigious 2-star Michelin country house hotel at Chagford, Devon. In 2000, he founded Michael Caines Restaurants and took over food and beverage operations at The Royal Clarence, Exeter, Britain's first hotel. Today Michael continues as Executive Chef at Gidleigh Park, as well as being an operational Partner and Director of ABode, the group of boutique hotels that he co-founded with his partner Andrew Brownsword.

Amongst numerous accolades, Michael has cooked in 10 Downing Street for the Prime Minister, and took part in ‘The Great British Menu', where his starter and dessert made it into the final rounds of a competition to cook a meal for the Queen’s 80th birthday. In the Summer of 2006 Michael was awarded an MBE for services to the hospitality industry.

Simon Rimmer will visit for Easter Saturday 7th April. Simon is a TV chef extraordinaire & vegetarian expert, passionate about good food from around the region. He will be demonstrating his culinary skills in the Taste Marquee celebrity kitchen. Simon co-presents Great Food Live and Great Food Bites. He has also had two series of his own – Rimmer’s Dinners and Grub’s Up with a very busy 2006; four new shows to his name! As well as This Little Farmer Went to Market, Great British Menu and the property show To Buy or Not to Buy, Simon is currently co-presenting Something for the Weekend and is filming his 4th series of Grubs Up for ITV.

Robert Kisby is newly appointed executive Head Chef at the recently refurbished Cock O Barton near Farndon. Robert has won many awards for his outstanding contribution to the catering industry. Formerly Manchester based, Robert has worked at the Midland Hotel, Bridgewater Hall and latterly he opened Le Mont at Urbis in 2002. He has been named Life magazines’ North West Chef of the year 2004 and Le Mont was awarded Restaurant of the Year 2003.

Other rumoured celebrity chefs are Andrew Nutter, Brian Mellor, Paul Heathcote and Gordon Ramsay.

Stephen Wundke, chairman of the Chester Food and Drink Festival; “This year there are even more reasons to visit or stay in Chester at Easter. It is a measure of how prestigious the Festival has become that we can attract so many world-class chefs. Last year we secured three first-class celebrity chefs and the demonstrations proved so popular we have really focused on this for 2007. Many of the stands in the taste marquee are taken and we now have only a few opportunities for sponsors left. Hotels and restaurants will also be offering special packages throughout the Festival for visitors.”

For more information about other events happening over the Chester Food & Drink Festival, visit chesterfoodanddrink.com.

Chester’s Food and Drink Festival is organised on behalf of Chester City Council with support from the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA), Visit Chester & Cheshire; the tourism board for Cheshire and Warrington, Cheshire County Council, Made in Cheshire, North West Fine Foods and the Rural Recovery Fund.