FOOD-LOVERS have been out in force enjoying a tastebud-tickling bank holiday weekend.

Thousands visited the annual Foodies Festival on Hove Lawns for the three-day gastronomic celebration on Hove Lawns.

Now in its seventh year, the event is a culinary staple in Brighton and Hove’s social calendar, with about 30,000 people expected over Saturday, Sunday and today.

Michelin star chefs Matt Gillan, Adam Simmonds and Stephen Crane, and MasterChef winner Ping Coombes were showing off their skills in the chef’s theatre.

Celebrity chef Aldo Zilli also used the event to launch his street food range, serving Italian burritos.

The festival’s Street Food Avenue has a Brazilian theme this year to help get people in the mood for this year’s Olympic Games in Rio.

However, for those looking for something away from South America there were plenty of other cuisines from around the world to choose from, including Japanese, Thai, Malaysian, Turkish, Indian, Korean, Mexican, French and African.

Other attractions included champagne, wine and craft beer masterclasses and a new bug-eating competition.

The famous chilli eating challenge also drew large crowds, with brave food-lovers getting themselves hot under the collar by trying out some of the world’s strongest peppers.

A new Feel Good Foods theme has also been introduced this year, healthy living chefs and food writers joining the line-up to cook with superfoods including kefir, lucuma, freekeh, kelp and banana flour, and sirt rich foods such as blueberries, kale, celery, buckwheat, turmeric, chilli and red onion.

Helen Chesshire who runs Brighton Gin with Kathy Caton, said the event had been going really well.

She said: “It has a really vibrant feel and the crowds have been brilliant.

“The weather has really helped.

“This is a great event and it is such as positive thing for the city.”

Those in the mood for some comfort food were also able to watch baking extraordinaire Charlotte White, master chocolatier Fiona Sciolti and top local cake-makers working their baking wizardry on the Cake and Bake stage, with a neighbouring site selling freshly baked breads, sponges, tarts, jellies and trifles.

One of the more unusual attractions was the Vietnamese Street Food stand, where those with a taste for the exotic tried tasting insects, including grasshoppers, caterpillars, mealworms, beetles, scorpions, locusts and ants.

The festival continues today from 11am to 6pm. Entrance is £14, concessions £11.