New stalls for the 13th annual wildfoods festival

Challenging new stalls for the 13th annual wildfoods festival

Bull’s penises, sheep’s eyes and watercress pesto ice cream are among the new tastings for the 13th annual Wildfoods Festival at Hokitika in March.

Event organiser Mike Keenan said nine new stall holders feature in the March 8 festival. Pig offal, mountain merino on Maori bread, dandelion salad, stir fried scorpion, scorpion lollypops, cricket and worm lollypops and seagull eggs are also new on the menu.

The festival is not just the show of the year on the West Coat but is rated one of the finest events in the country with 20,000 festival-goers.

The food-tasting fest on the West Coast of the South Island has featured in media around the world.

This year’s event will be of major interest following the Fear Factor tv show which has seen contestants struggling to stomach some daring food.

The 90 stalls in March year will feature some of the most daring delights imaginable, including horse meat, rams' balls, grasshoppers, mako shark, emu meat, spagnum moss, manuka smoked wild pork and water cress, snail, huhu grubs and bulls' testicles.

Whitebait is popular as ever. Slugs, ostrich meat, pickled ponga, worms, octopus, eel, kangaroo, mutton bird, truffles, paua, crayfish and mountain oysters (sheep testicles) are back again.

The festival is all about enjoying the abundant healthy, lean, organic wildfoods harvest from the West Coast.

Nine chefs are cooking off for the New Zealand wildfoods chef's title.

The festival in the greenstone and dairy town of 3300 is the biggest annual event on the West Coast, generating more than $2 million for the community.

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