Halcyon Days…
We look back on a golden season of busy festivals and events in and around Sussex serving up our freshly made pizzas from our funky horsebox and our oven trailer large festival setup. We’ve catered to community events in Newhaven, world renowned jazz festival Love Supreme and numerous weddings, private parties.
It was great to kick off the season with the Easter family fun day in Newhaven at the Sidings. We hadn’t yet opened the shop on Newhaven high street so it was a really great day meeting local folk and being part of a really lovely community event.
The weather held off for the children whilst they hunted eggs, the Ouse Valley Morris dancers were out in force and the kids had a great time hooking ducks and whirling around on the teacups. The arrival of the fire engine was the icing on the cake, well that and being able to grab an Abyss pint whilst the children were being entertained!
And we really did win a prize everytime!
Ouse Valley Morris say “Ouse Valley Morris is not a conventional Morris side, although we do dance Cotswold traditions. We prioritise being at the heart of our community by joining in and also by making our own events. We bring a subversive edge to animate issues and campaigns and use street theatre to enliven and win audiences to our causes.”
Pat said “It was all pretty mad at the start of May as we opened the new shop in Newhaven and simultaneously started our month-long residency at Speigel Gardens in Brighton.”
SpiegelGardens is a pop-up festival space created with love by Brighton people, for Brighton people - along with our incredible performers and guests from across the globe.
SpeigelGardens says “Nestled in the heart of Victoria Gardens North, it’s the perfect place to soak up the atmosphere, catch up with friends, and enjoy top-tier entertainment. Back after a successful run in 2025, and building on 10 years of amazing partnership with Brighton Spiegeltent on the Old Steine, the 2026 programme will be a varied, vibrant, and playful cross–art form experience.”
Catching a kids show before the crowds roll in.
Amidst all the pizza slingin’ we (Liz & the children) saw Fly Away Katie, the Long Nosed Puppets show, which was truly magical. Our children were in awe, the puppets were so beautiful. It was a moment of pure magic that evoked feelings of fond nostalgia, needless to say we all thoroughly enjoyed it.
The long nosed puppets with one of their beautiful puppets outside the theatre.
Keep up to date with SpeigelGarden here.
We popped up for the day at a local school’s Summer Fete to serve pizzas at their annual event. Lots of hungry families were very pleased to see a quality food offering with one parent saying “We feel really grateful to have you here this year, a mile apart from the cash & carry buffet usually on offer!”
With such a great response we managed to donate nearly £800 to the school, which they tell us has been used to fund children’s swimming lessons.
We can just about tell from the temperature gun reading that the oven is a whopping 377 degrees.
Pizzas cooking in the wood-fired oven.
We rolled through from our residency in Brighton, via catering a wedding, serving pizzas to the runners at the Peacehaven 1ok event, and the children’s school fete in Lewes, to glorious Glynde for Love Supreme Festival.
The Love Supreme Jazz Festival is an annual three-day music festival held at Glynde Place near our home town of Lewes, East Sussex, celebrating jazz, soul, funk, blues and hip-hop.
We had a glorious time serving up our freshly made pizzas to the music lovers and Ezra collective, who ate our pizzas after their performance!
One of the reasons our pizzas taste so good is because we make our own dough, using our locally grown heritage grain, fresh! Even when we’re in a field, in a heatwave, under the pressure of a busy festival. Pat and the team are skilled at making dough under varying temperatures and humidity to ensure you get the same tasty pizza everytime.
From the outside, to someone like me (Liz), creative director, and not having spent 15 years working making pizzas (Pat), navigating differing variables like this looks like extremely hard work… Pat responds “It’s a piece of piss!”
Oscar and our trusty dough mixer, it’s seen many a festival.
All the wood we use for our wood-fired oven comes from a locally coppiced wood in Barcombe.
Ladling the tomato sauce for the base can be quite meditative, especially when the queues are getting long and you are in a busy service. Pat says '“start in the middle and just draw a growing concentric circle”
The pass full of pizzas ready to go in the oven.
Festival goers enjoying the Blue in the Green area at Love Supreme Festival.
You can buy tickets for next years festival here.
Amidst large festivals and community events we are lucky enough to cater really lovely private events. We’ve been catering for this private party for the last three years and using our clients beautiful oven for the last two. Funtimes with friends old and new.
Working with an existing handbuilt wood-fired oven on our clients property.
Enjoying some orchestral music at the three day party. A very relaxed atmosphere with talented musicians offering a mini festival line-up of music ranging from classical, folk, and jazz. The incredible Kila band were also playing, with an absolutely incredible rapturous performance.
Often defined as contemporary Irish World music, Kíla fuse the effects of their own melodies and Irish (Gaeilge) lyrics, Irish folk instruments such as whistles, fiddles, Uilleann pipes, bones and bodhrán with djembe, congas, drums, mandolins, brass, and acoustic/electric/ bass guitars. Kíla’s eight members come from the differing musical backgrounds of traditional, classical, and rock.
After catering a few more private weddings, sorry unfortunately no photos of those, we survived the extreme heat for the four days of the Eastbourne Airshow. Our horsebox was set up on the Western Lawns and our larger festival setup with our oven trailer was at The Wish Tower.
Oscar keeping cool with a fan by our 350’ oven.
Our festival team in the horsebox.
Thankfully the event was on the beach so amidst watching the planes we could cool off in the sea. It was less crowded on the beach than anticipated.
We rounded off our run of festivals with our annual outing to Into the Wild Festival. It’s a festival we’ve been working at for years and .
Into the Wild describes itself as “An enchanted festival of wonder for every age. With brilliant activities, with workshops, Arts & cabaret with sublime music and dj's from across the world. We have some of the very best wild crafts artists in the country, Plus, inspiring speakers, delicious food, wild spa, sauna, foraging, archery and much more.”
You can buy tickets for next years festival here.
Chatting with our new pals Fermento
