The Londonlicious festival has arrived at London. One of the cuisine event’s main goals is to showcase more agricultural restaurants in the city. With the teamwork of the Growing Chefs non-profit organization and the Londonlicious festival, their goals are quickly becoming a reality. It’s been the fifth year since Growing Chefs took over the Londonlicious event.
The reason for their takeover of the event is to bring the food service industry back to it’s livelihood. Growing Chefs aims to recover the industry after it suffered the consequences of the pandemic. Jennifer Wyant is the executive administrator for the non-profit and the festival. Her and the steering committee are looking into creating a process to set parameters to allow for restaurants to more easily join the Londonlicious festival.
“We want that agriculture piece really spoken to. We want your menus to highlight local agriculture, which suppliers are using specific farms. For example, we get our chicken from McIntosh Farms, we get our produce from Urban Roots London and various others.” says Wyant.
Growing Chefs is working towards creating a pin map to add to their website. This map would have the many locations where agriculture is grown and then used by local restaurants. In this way the Londonlicious event and Growing Chefs can give back to the community.
“Food is communal, when you do a private event with us at our headquarters location we serve our food family style, because we say food is communal and it’s about breaking bread with people,” Wyant.
“Food is universal, so it crosses every culture every boundary. There’s just nothing more important than food. It’s life sustaining,” added Wyant.
This is the reason why the cuisine festival is looking to become even more diverse than it already is with its different restaurants and different plates. Among those restaurants is Fanshawe College’s very own The Chefs Table. Diversity in price ranges is also something the event is trying to achieve for the future. As inflation has affected prices on food, Wyant would like to add more take out restaurants to the mix.
“We have 39 restaurants participating for the winter 2025 festival and probably the most varied cuisine that we’ve ever had and that’s something we’re really trying to grow with the festival,” says Wyant.
“We’re really trying to help the restaurant industry come back in London, specifically in the downtown core, but everywhere. We have sort of a five year plan to grow the Londonlicious festival to through the Southwestern Ontario corridor,” Wyant
The Londonlicious festival begins on January 17 of 2025 and goes on until February 9. The various menus can be found on the Londonlicious website.
