Since 1974 the Festival Delle Sagre D’Asti has taken place during the second weekend of September. Over the years the Festival has grown and in 1988 was moved out of Piazza Alfieri to the bigger Piazza Campo del Palio, which now plays host to over 40 local participating towns, each of which is proud to prepare its speciality dish.

The Festival really begins on the Saturday morning and it is fascinating to see the rustic mobile “houses” set up in the piazza. These are not simple stands selling food, but miniature houses made of bricks or wood all decorated with curtains and flowers. If you are held up in traffic on your way to the weekly Saturday morning market, it is very likely you are behind a tractor carrying one of these houses, all proudly displaying the name of the town or village they originate from.

If you decide to attend the Festival on a Saturday evening, be prepared to stand in long queues because from small beginnings it has grown into a phenomenal success visited by people from all over the world. If you do decide it’s worth the wait (and you can be sure it is) you can try as many dishes as you can possibly manage, although choosing exactly what you want to eat is extremely difficult. This is not an occasion for standing on ceremony, but one of giving your taste buds a real treat. It is not “fine dining”, nor should it be. It is good, honest food that has filled the stomachs of hardworking people for many years, and continues to be the subject of many passionate discussions today. Never mind if you have never before tried tagliatelle with wild boar sauce (€3.00), slivers of truffles scattered over the top of hand made egg pasta (€4.50) or bruschetta as you have never had before (soma d’aj in the local dialect) served with grapes and red wine (€1.50), now is the time to explore all of these flavours, one after another if you like, in no order, just as the fancy takes you. There are cakes made with top quality plump hazelnuts collected locally, juicy peaches stuffed with chocolate and you just can’t miss out on the ‘Antico mun’, translated as a “sweet brick”, but tasting nothing like a brick.

You will go to bed full, but make sure you don’t go to bed late, because the next day you have to get up early and head back into Asti. You need to be early enough to find a good place to see the procession, which once seen really is never forgotten. Divided into the four seasons, each town represents a particular, important aspect taken from the agricultural history of the area. Respecting the past and respecting the land, four years after the first ‘Sagre’, this procession was introduced to highlight, in an ever-increasing industrial environment, the traditions of agricultural workers, their clothes, their pastimes and above all, their foods. To describe the atmosphere which envelopes the town of Asti on this spectacular Sunday morning in September is hardly possible. The sounds, the sights, the enthusiasm and the smiles emitting from the people taking part in the parade are something, which will remain with anyone who has had the pleasure and fortune to witness the event.

As the last float passes you by, there is the usual dash back to Piazza Campo del Palio, where the actual food preparation has begun again, to sample what you didn’t manage to eat the evening before. Some people buy their food and take it home in heatproof containers, but to my mind, it’s best to hang around in order to try, say Gnocchi all Cunichese (gnocchi as they make them in Cunico) or perhaps the Fritto Misto (mixed fried delicacies), that you wanted to try on the Saturday but the queue deterred you. It’s impossible to eat everything on offer and this has nothing to do with pure greed! It’s a fear too of missing out on something so delicious, so new like that rustic cheese from Rochetto Tanaro, served up to me for the first time way back in 1986, I thought it was the best cheese I had ever tasted. I’ve tasted others since then, but I have never forgotten that dish. Nor has the unusual flavour and texture of farinata, made with chickpea flour and seasoned with aromatic herbs, been forgotten. The list goes on and on, leaving you with the only option open to you, the promise to yourself that you will return next year.