Taste Great Southern: Celebration of the region’s produce wraps up for 2023 with Gary Mehigan praising Albany

Taste Great Southern’s two-week celebration of all things local food, wine and produce has come to a close following a big program of events and has left visiting chef Gary Mehigan singing Albany’s praises. The food festival ran from May 4-14 with more than 40 events taking place around the Great Southern, including in Katanning, Kojonup, Albany, Mt Barker and Denmark. Event director Richard Campbell said the reception to this year’s festival had been “fabulous”. “Many of our events were sold out and the feedback has all been positive,” he said. “Our featured celebrity chef, former MasterChef Australia judge Gary Mehigan, was a massive hit with the crowds at the Albany Farmers Markets on Saturday, whipping up a pan-fried Snapper on a base of broccoli, mushrooms and garlic for them to taste. “We are already seeing figures that suggest an increase in the number of visitors from outside the region who spent several days in the Great Southern. “It will certainly have resulted in an increased spend of tourist dollars over the past two weeks, as well as reinforcing the region’s reputation as a stunning food, wine, and produce centre as well as giving visitors a taste of its spectacular scenic beauty. “We finished with a flourish of quite different events covering everything from jazz to stylish restaurant food and the hugely successful Djeran Celebration with Fervor at the Oyster Harbour fish traps, which we will certainly do again next year.” The festival saw the involvement of local wineries and producers, as well as local chefs including Sam Dawson of BredCo and The White Star, Hybla’s Miguel Portillo and Adrien Voisin from Monty’s Leap. It also drew the talents of visiting chefs including Paul Iskov, Melissa Palinkas, Jordan Bruno, Don Hancey and Mehigan who each made the best of local produce during their foodie events. The Great Southern appeared to make a good impression on Mehigan who visited the region for the first time to attend the festival and cooked alongside Palinkas and Hancey at the Albany Boatshed last Friday and Garrison’s John Saville-Wright on Sunday. He took to his Instagram story on Sunday to post a gushing endorsement from Emu Point and later took in the view of Middleton Beach from the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial. Mehigan filmed a video while standing on the shore of Emu Beach where he told his 487,000 followers that he was looking forward to “a few days just enjoying all of this” after the completion of his festival duties — and confessed he was thinking about spending even longer in the region. “How beautiful is this? Stunning,” Mehigan said in the video. “I think I need to start looking for real estate, what do you reckon – move here to Albany?”