This year’s foodie festival in Tamworth will feature a laneway that will transform into one long retro wine bar as organisers move to inject some metro magic.
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Echoing the culinary cultural landscape of inner city Melbourne or even European alleyways, the innocuous little laneway known as Smith Pl will become a pop-up bar on April 4 as Tamworth celebrates another annual Taste date.
It will be the entree ingredient for this year’s Taste festival, with organisers adding a couple of new bite-sized bits to attract even more audiences to what they call a 10-day celebration of regional food, wine and produce.
The laneway bar will be dressed to the nines in a themed look provided by the local recycled wares shopfront Lifeline, which will refurbish a whole houseful of furnishings like lamps, tables, sofas, vases and other knick knacks into some vintage retro decorative items to set the scene.
“Lifeline has been collecting some interesting pieces for this and they’ll be for sale later on, but they will theme and decorate the laneway,” Taste co-ordinator Catherine Burton said yesterday.
“It will have similar furniture to the ’50s to ’70s, or 20th century retro if you like. As you walk along the 120m or so of Smith Pl there will be clusters of dining and lounge furniture.”
While many might see Smith Pl as an architectural oddity and mainly just a concrete roadway, there’s a quaintness and a beauty to it that Ms Burton has uncovered.
“The laneway has alcoves and different pieces to it. It’s one of those place people might walk along but only ever vaguely recall but it’s kind of intriguing, it’s got some beautiful pieces, like the windows that enhance the whole feel of it.”
Among them, she argues, is a round playschool-like window and the brickwork and the lighting that falls between the Town Hall wall and that of its Peel House neighbour that will add to the ambience.
There’s only 150 tickets to be sold for this soiree but at $45 that gets you entry, a drink, canapes and some soft mood music. A bar will operate for the three hour gig.
Taste this year will also see a Farmers’ Markets, The Long Lunch, Taste in the Park, a Farm Gate Trail, workshops, a Blokes BBQ segment, a garden bar in the park, a bakeoff and even kids’ cooking classes.
It runs from April 4 to 13.
