Top festival ideal place for Topp Twins

Top festival ideal place for Topp Twins

They’re famous everywhere for being wild and wacky and now, finally, the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival and the Topp Twins are joining forces.

Linda and Jools Topp are filming Ken’s Hunting and Fishing Show and where better than the 17th Hokitika Wildfoods Festival to pick up a few tips on Saturday 11 March?

While they’re there, the Twins will put on their inimitable comedy performance for the pleasure of the crowd which is again expected to reach around 18,000 gourmets who find the festival an irresistible magnet each year.

The entertainment at the festival has grown to provide the country’s most wide-ranging mix of music from country to rock to sophisticated jazz that can be heard at one show on one day.

“The entertainment could almost rival the wild food as an attraction,” admits festival organiser Mike Keenan. “But the food providers have struck back with even more fantastic and previously unheard of delicacies than ever before.”

In the open spaces, patrons will be shaking their booty to the Sambada Brazilian Dancing Group, grooving to the cool sounds of the Nairobi Trio, singing along to the humorous country sound of the Topp Twins or rocking with the The Taliband, to name just four of the 24 entertainers booked for the day.

They will need to move and groove to work off all the wild food and beverages they ingest from the 72 food and beverage stalls lining the walkways at the Cass Square festival site.

It’s not all huhu grubs, whitebait fritters and magpie pies. New foods this year include Posh Meets Bush – game salamis made from thar, venison, pork and chamois. Also new to the menu are deep fried eel spine, steamed fish eyes, duck tongues, cicada and pistachio ice cream, ostrich swamp patties and meaty vegan gonads. Wash it down with some conservative beverages such as Monteith’s summer ales, goat’s milk, or freshly squeezed juices of berry, feijoa, orange, mango and spirulina.

Other features of the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival are: Free entertainment on Friday night 10 March in Weld Street including woodchopping performances and the local Woodstock Music Club – plus the free West Coast sunset. The “dance of two halves” on Saturday night – a rock n’ roll marquee and a jazz marquee. Wildfoods Festival craft markets along the river bank. Westland Racing Club festival race meeting on Sunday 12 March.

To keep all that wild spirit under control, drinking is banned in public places except for the festival site. Downtown publicans will have their doors open to cater for patrons’ drinking needs on their premises downtown.

Mr Keenan said festival-goers should be in quick to book their tickets on www.wildfoods.co.nz or at Postie Plus shops to avoid disappointment. Tickets are capped at 18,000 and tend to sell out in advance of the festival. ENDS

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