Eat your way around the Carpathian Basin
Eastern European flavours at Góbéfest 24-26 June

Góbéfest, the UK’s only free weekend-long festival to celebrate the legendary region of Transylvania and the Carpathian Basin, is back for 2022.

Now in its sixth year, the festival will take place Friday 24-Sunday 26 June across Manchester’s Cathedral Gardens and Exchange Square. Stalls will be open from 11am-11pm every day of the festival.

Góbéfest shines the spotlight on the intriguing music, dance, culture, food and drink of the Carpathian Basin, bringing a lesser-known expanse of eastern Europe to Manchester every year since 2017.

Refreshments will be provided by a number of independent food and drink traders, offering favourites from around the Carpathian Basin, from giant pans of slowly simmered stews, to fried flat breads, pancakes and elaborate cakes.

How many of the following have you tried before? Ciorbă de burtă, amandina, túró rudi

Food and drink traders Friday-Sunday include:

The Langos Factory, returning to Góbéfest with their best selling lángos (deep fried flatbreads topped with creme fraiche and cheese), gulyas and stuffed cabbage leaves.

Levenshulme- based Delicii Românești, who will be serving up traditional Romanian fare including tripe soup (ciorbă de burtă), caviar salad and aubergine salad. Other menu items include mamaliga cu branza si smantana (polenta with cottage cheese), fasole cu ciolan (pork with beans) and amandina, a fancy Romanian chocolate layered cake filled with chocolate, caramel and fondant cream.

Bibi’s Swirl Cake, from Warrington, will be selling chimney cake, lángos and other well-loved Hungarian refreshments, including túró rudi, a chocolate-coated curd snack.

Tastylicious Catering’s dishes including halaszle, a paprika-based fish soup also known as fisherman’s soup, stuffed cabbage rolls, hortobágyi meat pancake, chicken paprikash, zserbo, a layered chocolate topped apricot and walnut cake and rigo jancsi, a traditional cube shaped chocolate sponge.

Gulyas Garden will be bringing marhapörkölt, a slow simmered Hungarian beef and onion stew.

Festival favourites Szekely Csarda will be back with a menu that includes mititei (barbecued Romanian skinless sausages made from pork, lamb and beef) and disznó flekken grilled pork steak.

The Romanian Chocohause brand sells giant decorated wedges of handmade chocolate and chocolate cakes, including gluten free and no added sugar varieties.

Pompas Mezes’ Hungarian honey bread is amongst the most intricately embellished in the world, often featuring designs reminiscent of lace and embroidery. The honey preserves the cookie, so it can be kept for over 10 years in its sealed packaging.

Candy Floss Extra has all the colours of the rainbow covered with its banana, blue Raspberry, cherry, pink bubblegum, tropical, green apple & melon flavoured spun sugar on a stick.

Beer is by Transylvanian artisan brewer Csiki Sor, who took on Heineken in a trademark battle and won, and a Szicsek palinka bar will provide traditional fruit spirits with no added sugar, up to 50 percent proof.