Another rave awards night! And, after the various technical hitches that dogged us last year, it was VERY nice to be upgraded to the super efficient Conference Pod at Food Matters Live for this year’s presentation. Which we very nearly filled it!! If you want to get quick feel for what was going on – dip into the video below.
And…. if you want to know who won what – over and above the splendid Mommi who were our overall winners – just go to this page on the FFEOA site, spool down and follow the links.
There were some genuinely fabulous entrants who did an amazing job of not only caring for their food sensitive guests but actually creating seriously delicious food. Many of our judges were knocked out by the quality of the dishes they were offered. And their praise went not only to the tiny one man/woman restaurant with a very personal interest in allergy – but to the massive chains that are doing a pretty impressive job of offering safe and tasty at least gluten and milk free dishes across the country.
You can read all of their comments for yourself as every bronze, silver and gold winner now has their own page on the FFEOA’ site with a selection of the judges’ comments – all there to feed ‘the map’…..
Those of you who have watched the video will know that, thanks to judge Benjamin of Forever FreeFrom, we now have a FFEOA ‘Good Food Guide’ – right here on the FFEOA home page.
There have been a number of attempts over the last few years to launch ‘freefrom’ eating out guides but they have always struggled both to get FF eateries to sign up – and to provide any sort of independent guide to what those who did sign up were like.
But by including the last three years’ worth of gold, silver and bronze medal winners in the FFEOA map/guide we already have a decent body of freefrom eateries around the country. And…. we have a built-in credibility rating (they are all medal winners at some level) and lots of feedback on what they are actually like – our judges’ comments! So we really are kicking off a proper ‘freefrom’ TripAdvisor!!
We are seriously excited about this! We are offering it out to any other site that is in any way connected with freefrom and inviting them to embed the map in their site – or at least to link to it. We hope that lots of people will take up the offer as it seems to us that being able to offer suggestions for good freefrom eateries around the country would enhance any freefrom site and draw more visitors to it.
For the medal winners of course it will be fabulous publicity – their wins will be broadcast right across the freefrom web! And finally – and most important of all – it should be a brilliant resource for anyone on any kind of restricted diet looking for somewhere safe and good to eat out! As Nathalie said a few weeks ago in her article on why she was so excited about the awards, what is not to like in that!!!
So excuse me if I am getting rather over excited here, but…. We really do think that the map is going to be a huge boost to the awareness of the awards – which can only mean that they will grow – and more people will create more wonderful freefrom food in food service – which will in turn greatly improve the lot of those in restricted diets wanting to eat out! Win, win, win…..
If anyone wants to know more about this year’s winners – please go to the winners’ page on the FFEOA site. If anyone wants to know more about the map or would like to embed it in their site – please contact me!
