Margaret River Gourmet Escape 2015

We were extremely lucky to be invited to the Margaret River Gourmet Escape, we had an amazing time last week and would like to share our experience with you. The event showcased all that Margaret River has to offer in terms of good quality produce and beverages, as well as the opportunity to watch your favourite celebrity chefs cook live on stage. To name a few on the line up, Marco Pierre White, Matt Moran, Adriano Zumbo and Rick Stein.

The event currency was "Gems", one gem = $7 and the gems were used to purchase food and drinks at all the individual stalls within the Gourmet Village. These are the stalls that we visited throughout the day:

We were given a free wine glass upon entry, in which we used to taste all the amazing local wines that were featured at each stall. It may seem like a tiny taster at each stall but before we knew it, we were already tipsy! (Hehe)

 

Out of the many wines we tasted, the Harmans Pink Sparkling stood out to us and we ended up purchasing a bottle from the lovely Greg, who is responsible for making the wine. 

Throughout the event there were yummy little tasters of chocolate, cheese and other delicious produce that comes from the Margaret River region. One of our favourites were Gabriel Chocolate, the chocolate was creamy, smooth and melted in your mouth!

 As it was such a hot day we decided to cool down with an ice cream sandwich coated with chocolate chip cookie on the bottom and dipped in Gabriel chocolate. 

The boys at The Cocktail Lab (who also were at Taste of Perth) were there showing us their skills with the bunson burner. Check out the amazing cocktails below, they all tasted amazing. Our favourite was the Torched Lemon Meringue Pie!

Torched Lemon Meringue Pie & Grasscutter Mojito

Nitro Espresso Porter

Mac and Cheese Toastie

After having a few drinks, we craved a greasy, cheesey toastie but we were left disappointed unfortunately. First of all, it shouldn't be called a toastie because the bread wasn't toasted properly and it was soggy. The mac and cheese inside was average and the hot sauce was too much which overpowered the whole sandwhich. 

This is where the chefs presented their cooking shows, we loved that you could be in such close proximity to your favourite chefs. The ownly downfall was that the seating area was not under cover and as it was an extremely hot day you couldn't stay out and watch them for very long.

We were extremely lucky to even get a taxi back to our accomodation as we forgot to book a bus ride back. We would like to give a shotuout to the awesome taxi driver Darren, he even stopped to show us this beautiful scenery on the way back.

To sum up the event, our positives and negatives were:

Positives
- Huge variety of food and drink avaliable
- Amazing atmosphere and beautiful venue
- A great line up of chefs
- Lots of free tasters
- Lovely staff

Negatives
- Purchases became quite expensive due to the gem system (1 Gem = $7)
- Portions of purchased food were small and not worth the price
- No shade in the Chef Theatre
- No free water was avaliable

- General Tickets are only for access to the Gourmet Village, other parts of the event required extra costs 

Overall we had a great time, every event has it's positives and negatives which can be improved upon in the future. A special thanks goes to the Margaret River Gourmet Escape marketing team for inviting us, it was such an awesome experience and we would love to do it all again!