Eat Cambridge 2013 — the first festival
The first edition, started by three Cambridge residents, run entirely by volunteers.
The Eat Cambridge festival archive
Eat Cambridge was a food and drink festival held in Cambridge from 2013. It was founded by three residents, run by volunteers, and built around a Main Event at the Corn Exchange and a fortnight-long fringe hosted by independent businesses across the city. Its last announced edition was for May 2020.
Eat Cambridge was an independent, volunteer-run food and drink festival held in Cambridge from 2013. This archive is maintained by this publication, which is not the festival and is not operated by its organisers.
Why this archive exists
The festival's own site is gone, and with it the programmes, the event listings and the record of who took part. A good deal of that material was cited at the time by the local press, by city organisations and by the businesses involved, and those citations now point at nothing.
What is here has been put together from the festival's own published programmes and from contemporary coverage of its events. Where the record does not establish something, it is left out rather than filled in.
By year
Eat Cambridge 2014
The second year, with a larger fringe and a printed brochure that circulated widely.
Eat Cambridge 2015
Pop-ups, tastings and a brochure released online ahead of the fortnight.
Eat Cambridge 2016
The programme published as a downloadable document; the festival at its established size.
Eat Cambridge 2018
Chefs, workshops, tutored tastings, a Korean canteen and a bar pop-up.
Eat Cambridge 2019
Sponsors named, a food-waste campaign, and a photography competition.
Eat Cambridge 2020
An edition announced for late May, in a year when very little went ahead as planned.
The parts of the festival
The Main Event
The festival's central day, held at the Cambridge Corn Exchange.
The Main Event food fair
How the festival's central day worked as a producers' fair.
The festival fringe
Two weeks of smaller events hosted by independent businesses across the city.
The festival programme
How the Eat Cambridge programme was put together and published.
Cocktails at the festival
The drinks side of the programme, from tutored tastings to bar pop-ups.
Reducing waste at Eat Cambridge 2019
The festival's 2019 campaign to cut waste at its own events.
The EatCamCam photography competition
A public photography competition run under the festival's own tag.
Fanny Cradock and the fabulous summer party
A themed festival event, and the television cook it was built around.
What is still here
One thing the festival worked alongside has outlasted it: the market on Market Square, which trades seven days a week and has done in some form since the Middle Ages. It has its own page in the guide.
The rest of this site is a guide to eating and drinking in Cambridge now. If you came here looking for the festival, that guide is the nearest living thing to it.