ST IVES Food and Drink Festival is set to return from May 16 to 18, offering a refreshed programme of celebrations hosted on Porthminster Beach.
Bringing together some of the biggest names in the culinary world, the 2025 festival is also introducing much more music, with the launch of the Sunset Sessions, and a host of new wellness, family-friendly and masterclasses to keep families entertained.
The Chef’s Fire Pit welcomes demonstrations from some of the finest chef’s the UK has to offer – including Ashley Palmer-Watts, co-founder of one of the UK’s biggest culinary success stories in 2024, The Devonshire, Soho; Tom Brown of the seafood sensation Pearly Queen, Shoreditch; food writer and veg grower Kathy Slack, Cornwall’s own Jude Kereama of Kota & Kota Kai, Dorian Janmaat of Ardor, a newly established gem in St Ives and Ben Prior of Porthminster Beach Café.
From hands-on cooking sessions with Jeffrey Robinson’s St Ives Cookery School to wild foraging adventures with Josh Quick, there’s something for every taste.
In a new addition to the festival, local specialists Mor Holan will be offering a range of wellness sessions on the shoreline alongside a wood fire sauna. Visitors can expect ice baths, cold water dip tanks, sauna rituals, workshops and treatments, plus yoga, Pilates, breath work, beach fitness, mindfulness, meditation and reflexology.
Working in collaboration with St Ives Town Council, to develop new links and opportunities for young people (aged 11-16), St Ives Food & Drink Festival has received community grant funding to offer cooking masterclasses with St Ives Cookery School.
The free-to-attend cooking classes will be available for school children of St Ives, offering then hands-on tuition to learn from local chef and owner of St Ives Cookery School, Jeffrey Robinson, who’ll be teaching them how to make pancakes and homemade chocolate sauce, cooked over fire, at the beach over the festival weekend.
Also at the festival, St Ives youth team YONKERS, which means young person in Cornish, will in the community tent over the three days looking for input into how young people use the town. They will have a large map and be asking about the spaces young people use and what barriers young people see in the town.
In a new addition, the live music programme is turning up a notch by the introduction of the Sunset Sessions. These are ticketed live music evenings, in a festival first, to offer bigger name acts plus support every night.
The Sunset Session headliners include respected and popular DJ Norman Jay MBE on May 16, husband-and-wife duo Ferris & Sylvester on May 17 and multi-award-winning hip-hop act The Scribes on May 18.
To stay up to date with the latest festival news or to purchase tickets, visit stivesfoodanddrinkfestival.co.uk