Food & Drink

Culture Night Belfast offers to `feed the 5,000'

Fourteen farmers and distributers have contributed 1.5 tonnes of surplus veg
Fourteen farmers and distributers have contributed 1.5 tonnes of surplus veg Fourteen farmers and distributers have contributed 1.5 tonnes of surplus veg

A big pot, an even bigger table, and lots and lots of curry - Culture Night Belfast is planning one of its most audacious events yet.

A `feed the 5,000' event is being planned for the evening of September 16 when a giant dinner table will be set along Donegall Street in Belfast.

The plan is that a giant vegetarian curry will feed hungry revellers.

Fourteen farmers and distributers have contributed 1.5 tonnes of surplus veg from this year's harvest to go towards the big pot on the night. People can also help get involved at `chop and bop' events across Belfast on Thursday September 15, where volunteers can have a boogie while helping prepare the massive amount of veg the day before and on the day itself.

Adam Turkington of Culture Night said: "Feeding 5,000 people is the perfect piece de la resistance for Culture Night Belfast 2016.

"We've been leading up to this for a while now. This year's culture night is all about people coming together to break bread, a shared sense of community, and idea that we have more in common than apart.

"The big table along Donegall Street to feed the 5,000 in an utterly sustainable way is the perfect demonstration of that, and we hope it will be a suitably impressive highlight for people coming to Culture Night on 16 September."

Niall Bakewell of Friends of the Earth NI said good food, produced in a way that does not hurt the planet "should be a human right".

"We need to stop seeing it as little more than another commodity whose only worth is its ability to turn a profit," he said.