Chester-le-EATS Food, Drink and Music Festival announces epic line up

The event will return to Seat Unique Riverside, in Chester-le-Street, on 5 and 6 October featuring a jam-packed line-up of the region’s best street food traders and producers, live music, and plenty of fun for all the family.

Now in year three, this year’s event has been billed as the “best one yet” with an enhanced Family Zone including fairground rides, dancers, stilt walkers, face painting and a visit from Durham Cricket mascots Chester and River.

The Family Zone is sponsored by Everyone Active and will feature sports fun for families and a soft play area by the Northeast Play Bus.

Chester-le-Street café, REfUSE, which promotes sustainable practices and offers its customers a ‘pay as you feel’ policy, will also be at the event with its Smoothie Bikes, where kids can make smoothies for free by pedalling a bike which powers up the blenders.

Ythan Sale, Durham Cricket’s Events Manager, said: “We’ve really ramped things up this year and as well as an epic line-up of street-food traders, food producers and music, we’ve focused on enhancing this event by pulling out all the stops for families.

“Since year one our mission has always been to provide a fun-filled, free-to-attend, two days out for our surrounding community. We work closely with the public and the amazing businesses that attend the event to look at how we grow year on year.

When it comes to food, visitors can tuck into everything from Greek food by Acropolis, Sri Lankan dishes by Kolamba, duck wraps from Hatch76, low and slow-pulled meat from Smokiedokies and fresh buttermilk fried chicken from Twisted Chick.

Seasoned street food favourites, Spud Gun Loaded Fries, are also back with tastebud tantalising loaded fries and, new for this year, banging burgers.

New to Market Street is Burtree Puddings, Really Indian, which sells curry sauces, and fermented hot sauce specialists, Balefire Sauces.

Visitors will also be able to buy a whole range of produce from scotch eggs by Cassie’s Kitchen to traditional pastel de nata (Portuguese tarts) by Sunrise Patisserie as well as cakes, bakes and small-batch craft gins, rums, vodka, whisky and beers.

Plus, there will also be crafts and gifts from Colliery Soap Studio and Brewery Jewellery.

Live local bands and music acts throughout the weekend include headliners Tall Shaves and The Belta Reivers at 1pm each day.

Chester-le-EATS will run from 11am to 6pm on both days. Entry to the event, which is also dog-friendly, is via Gate 1.

For a full list of food stands and timings of the music acts, visit https://www.durhamcricket.co.uk/events/chester-le-eats