Travel: Glastonbury Foodie Review- Day 3

In the morning I felt a bit lazy to be honest, and so decided to go to the closest food option available- The Children’s World tent. This place comprises of a nice coffee bar, with freshly squeezed orange juice, and the main part is a bit canteen- serving good decent honest food, at big portions, for a good price. It is backstage Theatre Circus, so it caters for a lot of the workers/performers. However, the public can come in and sample it’s delicacies, just by asking for a theatre circus guest pass to visit it at the gate-they’ll give you one don’t worry. The guest pass means you can visit backstage theatre circus during the day and to check the green room bar at night, except between the hours of 2am-8am (this is to stop people from camping there). The Children’s World canteen serves all sorts of things- from 8-12 they do continental and fried breakfasts, and at lunch they serve things like lasagne, pies, quiches, fish and chips- like school dinner food really but done well! The place is perfect really cause you just get a bit plate full of calorific yummy-ness,  a meal to properly set you up for the day, and it normally only costs about £3 (must be cheapest place to eat at Glasto!). What’s even better about the place is the fact a lot of the money that you pay for the food goes to a children’s charity to help feed starving children all over the world. My big full English, OJ, black coffee and large grin definitely applauds their food and their cause!

I then went for a bit of a wander. I thought I would mention this place, which again is always at the same place every year (round the corner from the Big Top):  The New Mexico Cantina, which for your guys information, is an utter rip-off. As mentioned previously, glasto food is very expensive, most “meal deals” are about 7 or 8 quid. But normally, if you go to the right places, that £7/8 will leave you absolutely stuffed and sorted for the rest of the day/ night. However, this place is a joke. Their “Buffalo Festival Special”, which if I remember right was buffalo chilli, with rice, nachos and salsa, which costs about7 or 8 quid, was a TINCY Tupperware with a few spoonfulls of tasteless chilli and rice in it. Now, I haven’t tried their burritos yet, so I wont damn the place entirely to the ground, but I would recommend you steer clear of this stall- overpriced meals, and don’t worry there are plenty of other nicer cheaper places to get Mexican food around the site.

This place was a striking new edition to the food stall scene that I hadn't encountered before- this fabulously dressed Tapas Stall, near the West Holts stage. I noticed this stall was very popular, with the food coming out of there looking very fresh and tasty. They dish veggie as well as meaty tapas selection platters. Mum tried it, said it was all right- but noted that their Patatas Bravas wasn’t very good. They also did a very pleasant drink- fresh lemonade with a hint of raspberry, some of the proceeds of which went to charity ("LemonAid!")

Me and mum went for a bit of a wander up at the Green Future Fields. Now, if you are the creative, hands-on, arty type, this is the place at the festival you want to go. There are workshops for almost everything! Willow weaving, knitting, iron-working, making your own jewellery, making your own bowls and cutlery, pretty cool! In fact, you could come back from Glastonbury, having made your own lovely kitchenware to eat off at home, to remind you of the festival!

We wandered back down to The Bandstand area to chat to dad. Near the Stone Circle field, and always in the same location every year, is the “Thali Café”- exemplary vegetarian indian platters, normally a mix of two veggie curries (liked mixed veg Balti, and a chickpea curry or something), a lentil dahl, salad, chutneys/pickles, and a poppadum or chapatti. Always reasonably priced too, so if you fancy a healthy Indian feast, this is the place to go.

Saw this great sign in the healing fields, certainly the last part I agree with (if it makes any sense!) “I dream of a world where there are more than 13 episodes of Dr Who a Year, for Chickens to able to cross the world without their mother’s being questioned, A VEGAN WORLD!! (But with Bacon Sandwiches!)" Haha!! Yes mate!!

It was time for a bite to eat now, so me and mum both got a pizza from the “Glade Pizza” place (where The Glade stage used to be, I'm not sure where it’s been moved now, lol!). Was fairly pricey, £8, but it was a proper wood fired pizza, looked great and tasted great- pretty gourmet for glasto I was thinking! We just had the plain margharita, yummy.

Another note for self caterers- ran out of cornflakes? Ran out of milk? ran out of batteries??? Well do not despair, near the Left Field stage is the Glastonbury 24 hour supermarket, with all your foodie/campy needs catered for- this place really does have everything, a good stall to find and remember where it is for future reference!

There were a lot more “mezze” and tapas places open this year I have noticed- there was one place in the market area, almost completely opposite the bandstand stage (towards The Pyramid side) that made everyones mouths water as we walked past- the “Moorish North African & Arabic Souk Food” stall. They served a vegetarian plate full of delicious mezze goodies, such as Lebanese salads, hummus, olives, falafels, and spiced Arabic vegetables/ beans. You could get 1 of these for £2, or a selection plate for £8. I tried a selection plate from here- so flavoursome! Their “Tcekchouila” (a spicy pepper and olive stew) was to die for!! And the staff there were always so well presented and friendly- you do get a lot of glasto people working on the stalls, that are moody as sin because they are hungover from the night before or they are missing a band they want to see or something, but the staff at this stall always had a smile on their faces.

A rather late midnight feast was the order of the day for me, after a few ciders with my dad and mates backstage at the bandstand. On the way to the West Holts stage was a Lebanese food stall, on the left side, selling Lebanese chicken and lamb curries with spiced rice, or Haloumi/falafel salad plates, or some rather sexy looking donner/chicken kebabs. I went for a half and half chicken/lamb curry with rice- and OH MY GOD, it was one of the nicest meals I have EVER had at Glastonbury, and as you have surmised from my review so far, I have eaten a lot at this festival in the past! They were a new stall that I had never seen before too, that I will definitely be looking for again next year. Both curries had different tantalising flavours, both fairly heavy in cardamom and cinnamon- and they were fairly mild which made me happy. I try to avoid spicy food at festivals, and I recommend you do the same, because a) you end up drinking loads of liquid with it, which means more trips to the dreaded porta-loos, which you generally want to avoid and b) you are more likely to end up with a bit of a dodgy stomach (or at least I am) consuming very spicy food, and take it from someone who got a food poisoning bug at Glasto once, being ill during the festival is not a pretty sight nor comfortable experience!!

I think this evening I went for a fair few bevvies here and there, because I seem to remember I didn’t wake up till like 5ish the next evening (naughty!) so lets just say Friday’s review is a little shorter than the others!!