Serve It Forth

A brand new festival devoted to the history of food and drink

If you follow me on Instagram or Bluesky you will have spotted several posts on a new food history festival I am organising with Neil Buttery, Allie Pino ( a regular guest on this podcast) and Thom Ntinas.

Serve It Forth will take place on 18 October 2025. Our first event will be online but if it’s a success (and we really hope it will be) we’re hoping to make it an in person event in the future.

Each of the organisers will be responsible for a ‘course’ (in keeping with the culinary history theme) on the day. Some of us will be doing presentations and others will be curating discussions. Given the topic of my next book my course will have a Shakespearean theme. You can learn more about this in the short video below.

In addition this Shakespeare themed discussion there will be courses on the famous chefs in ancient Greece; a talk about what the Thames can tell us about the feasting tables of the living and memento mori traditions; and Neil will be asking Tom Parker Bowles how we can keep food traditions alive.

In between each course there will be pre-recorded cookery demos for you to watch too to give the event a food festival vibe. We’re also delighted to have Netherton Foundary (who make amazing cookware) as sponsors for the event.

Early bird tickets for the event are on sale now with a 25% discount on the full ticket price. Don’t worry if you can’t be there for all of the courses on the day. Each session will be recorded and ticket holders will be given access to the videos for a good period of time after the event to watch at their leisure.

You can book your ticket for the event here.

You can also follow Serve It Forth on Instagram and Bluesky or subscribe to the newsletter.

I really hope you can join us for what promises to be a thoroughly entertaining day.

Sam x

PS My new book Much Ado About Cooking, written in collaboration with Shakespeare’s Globe, is out on 23 October 2025 but is available for pre-order now. There will also be a short mini podcast series coming out in the run up to its release to get you in the mood!