Hokitika Wildfoods Festival facts for kids
The Hokitika Wildfoods Festival is an annual event held in early March in Hokitika, New Zealand. Its main attraction is an array of unusual foods.
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Origin
The Wildfoods festival was started in 1990 by Hokitika local Claire Bryant, a producer of gorse-flower and rose-petal wine, who wanted to celebrate the flavours and produce of the West Coast. The first festival in March 1990 coincided with Hokitika's 125th anniversary and was run by Heritage Hokitika. It took place in a newly-developed heritage area on Gibson Quay in downtown Hokitika. The first Wildfoods had 30 stalls, and attracted 1800 people. Alison Holst was the celebrity judge.
Wildfoods has traditionally been run on the second Saturday in March, the driest time on the West Coast. The weather has generally been fine, but in the third festival in 1992 a squall blew down the festival tent. By that year visitor numbers had increased to 3,800, so in 1993 Wildfoods moved to its current venue of Cass Square, which has a capacity of 10,000. In 1994 for the first time the festival was opened by the West Coast Member of Parliament, Damien O'Connor, rather than the Mayor of Westland. One councillor decried the involvement of a "foreigner" as "propaganda by the Labour Party".
Food
The Wildfoods Festival's distinctive identity comes from the range of unusual foods available. Its most notorious offerings include:
- Huhu grubs, the larvae of the large New Zealand beetle Prionoplus reticularis, retrieved from rotten logs that are chopped up on site. Sometimes served live to daring or intoxicated attendees, but usually cooked on a barbecue, these are described as "nutty and meaty" in flavour.
- Escargots (or Westcargots) made from the introduced European snail Cornu aspersum, gathered by locals from their gardens, and fed on carrots for three days by Westland High School teachers, or on flour for a week by the Hokitika Girl Guides and Brownies.
- Home-brewed moonshine, served one year by the Hokitika Rotary Club with a sheep drenching gun.
Other foods offered at the festival have included chicken feet, jellied fish eye shots, lamb tails, crocodile and kangaroo bites, baby octopus, fish heads, pig pizzle, sheep brain pâté, sweetbreads, wild pork, whitebait fritters, pāua, pipi, wasp larvae ice cream, gorse-flower wine, earthworms, possum, pig's trotters, mussels, venison, scallops, hāngi, crispy tarantulas, bovine colostrum milkshakes, pork-blood casserole, cow udders, seagull eggs, live grasshoppers, and whisky sausages.
The prizewinning recipe at the first Wildfoods Festival was venison goulash, prepared by Pierre Esquilat of Hokitika's Cafe de Paris. There are cooking demonstrations by celebrity chefs such as Ben Bayly and MasterChef NZ 2015 winner Tim Read. Maggie Beer was the Festival celebrity chef in 1995, and Helen Jackson (who comes from Hokitika) in 1999.
- Food at the Wildfoods Festival
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Splitting wood for huhu grubs
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"Westcargots"
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Other events
Dressing up in novelty costumes is common at Wildfoods, and the festival runs a Feral Fashion competition. Musical entertainment has been provided by the New Zealand Army Band, the Black Seeds, Salmonella Dub, Elemeno P, and local musicians such as the West Coast Kokatahi Band, Westland District Brass, and Hokitika Districts Country Music Club. A fireworks display ends the festival.
- Costumes at the 2011 Wildfoods Festival
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"Army Men"
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"Mortal Kombat"
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"Barbie and Ken"
In culture
The 1999 New Zealand feature film Magik and Rose, directed by Vanessa Alexander, is set before and during the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival. It was partly shot at the 10th festival in 1999 (guest presenter Gary McCormick makes a cameo). The film's world premiere was at Hokitika's Regent Theatre at the 2000 festival.
