Endorsement boosts festival

WILD TASTES: Christchurch's Rowena Foster, left, and Michelle Healey, loosen up the tastebuds with a wild vodka shot.

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The Hokitika Wildfoods Festival benefited from being named among the world's unmissable festivals this year by a British travel-guide company, organisers say.

About 13,500 festival-goers feasted from more than 80 stalls on over 10,000 whitebait patties, "westcargots" – snails in garlic butter – duck giblets, mountain oysters, exotic sausages, huhu grubs, pickled and raw punga and wasp-larvae icecream.

There was a popular free sampling of non-protected pukeko – described as tasting like a cross between wild pork and venison – from a local cull.

The best new-food prize went to Shayne Wratt for his Glass-Eyed Creek Sauce – a smoky, tomato barbecue sauce that carried the slogan "Tried and Tested on Cooked Animals".

Prizemoney and proceeds from Wratt's stall went to a fund for the daughter of Dave White. White, the publican of the Little Wanganui Hotel, south of Karamea, died last year.

The best-stall prize went to the Udderly Divine Desserts stall run by mothers from the Kaniere Play Centre.

It was the second successive win for the group, who sold pikelets made with bovine colostrum – the milk produced by a cow after the birth of a calf – and colostrum shooters.

Organiser Mike Keenan said the event generated about $2 million for the West Coast economy.

"The West Coast turned on a glorious weekend for the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival and I was delighted with the positive way everyone entered into the spirit of the festival and really enjoyed themselves," he said.

The recognition from international travel company Frommer's was testament to the event's recognition, he said.

- © Fairfax NZ News