Jack Stein and Gill Meller join the Dorset Seafood Festival

Renowned chefs Jack Stein, executive chef from the Stein family restaurants, and River Cottage’s group executive chef, Gill Meller are joining the line up at the 8th Pommery Dorset Seafood Festival.

Taking place on the 11-12 July 2015 in Weymouth Harbour the pair will also be joined by many regional chefs including author and chef proprietor of the Crab House Cafe, Nigel Bloxham, ITV’s ‘Harbour Lives’ star and owner of Dorset Oysters, Pete Miles, BBC MasterChef’s Mat Follas from The Casterbridge in Dorchester and executive chef of the Highcliff Grill, Bournemouth, Matt Budden.

Visitors will also be entertained and informed by local chef proprietor of the Dining Room, Weymouth – Taher Jibet with his local seafood creations in aid of the Fishermen’s Mission; and award winning Russell Brown from Creative About Cuisine who is heading up our Dorset Young Seafood Chef Competition this year.

Jack Stein will be joined by Dave Giles, head chef of Rick Stein’s in Winchester, and in addition to Gill Meller, forager John Wright also from River Cottage will be on hand to talk through all the edible items he will have picked up from his coastal walk that morning.

Fish experts include Duncan Lucas from Passionate About Fish; Nick Bryant from Samways; and Innes from Fish Box – all crazy about using sustainable local fish. They’ll be helping to ‘glam our clams’ as well as running the famous fish auctions in aid of the Fishermen’s Mission.

There will be food from around 100 stallholders offering a selection of fish dishes in the beautiful setting of Weymouth Harbour, and, new for 2015, visitors can sit and dine in a new pop up restaurant brought to you by the award winning Hive Beach Cafe, sponsored by Finn Square.

Dorset Seafood Festival represents the UK’s largest, free to attend, seafood festival, recently placed first in Conde Nast Travellers’ UK’s best food festivals list, second in Country Life’s top five food festivals, fifth in the Financial Times ‘foodie festivals’ as well as winning Gold in the inaugural Dorset Tourism Awards for Tourism Event of the Year and Silver in the South West Tourism Excellence Awards in 2013/14.

Visit www.dorsetseafood.co.uk for more information

The Fishermen’s Mission:

For the past 134 years, the Fishermen’s Mission has been supporting the work of Fishermen around the UK’s Shores. Last year the Fishermen’s Mission helped Fishermen access grants in excess of £1.5 Million, this is an increase of over £719K more than the previous year.