We’ve been shortlisted in Great British Food Awards – but we need your help to win it!

Anyone who knows us well will know we’re actually quite a modest bunch here at Hunters – so we don’t like to be seen to be blowing our own trumpet too much!

That said…sometimes you have to blow your trumpet because you have some fantastic news which needs sharing! And now is one of those times! As not only do we have great news, we also need to ask a teeny tiny favour.

We’re delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted in the prestigious Great British Food Awards 2019! Yay us! We’re one of six finalists in the Best Independent Retailer category for the North of England – against some very stiff competition.

These are the sixth annual Great British Food Awards and this is the fourth time we’ve been lucky enough to make the final. So, the judges have deemed us worthy of a shortlist nomination – and now we need your help because it’s all down to a public vote! If you’ve ever enjoyed shopping with us, we’d be eternally grateful if you could spare five minutes to pop to the website and give us a vote. There’s even a little incentive….prizes to be won!

Votes for the awards can be cast at www.greatbritishfoodmagazine.com/awards until 15th August 2019. Anyone voting is automatically entered into a prize draw to win one of over 30 fantastic foodie prizes, worth more than £7,000. There’s sparkling new pans, a River Cottage break for two, cookbooks, hampers, gadgets to help take your cooking to the next level – even the chance to win a greenhouse! There’s 19 categories in total to vote for (although you don’t have to do them all), including restaurants, food writers, cookbooks and TV personalities.

We are genuinely delighted to have been shortlisted in these fantastic awards again, which look to celebrate everything that is great about British food and drink. We never take for granted what we do, and we’re so grateful to our amazing team, our wonderful local suppliers and producers and of course all our lovely customers. Thank you all!

We’d love to bring the award home to Helmsley – maybe this is our year…

Foodie favourites from across the globe

What’s your favourite food?

Tough question, we think! Everyone’s an individual, and no doubt many of us would say something different. Or would we? An international YouGov study of more than 25,000 people in 24 countries show that actually there’s quite a lot of similarities.

Apparently, officially, Italian food is the most popular cuisine in the world. As many of us may have chosen ourselves, it seems pizza and pasta are among the most popular dishes the world over, scoring an average of 84% across all the countries taking part in the research. (unsurprisingly it definitely came out most popular with the Italians themselves at 99%).

Chinese cuisine took second place with a popularity score of 78%. Although only 95% of Chinese people said they liked it, bizarrely. Japanese food followed with an average score of 71%.

Fourth and fifth were Thai food and French dining, with Spanish, American, Mexican, Indian and Turkish food making up the remainder of the top 10.

British cuisine came in 16^th – with an average score of 50%, proving particularly unpopular with other European countries, scoring around 25% from many. We quite like our own food – at 91% - and Singaporeans rated it the next highly at 76%.

Peruvian and Finnish food trailed the bottom of the 34 types of cuisine included in the research. But could that be because many have never tried them?

When it comes to us Brits and our favourite types of cuisine, Italian food came out the highest at 91%, followed by Chinese at 86%, Indian at 84%, Spanish at 80% and Mexican at 76%. Saudi Arabian food came bottom of our list with just 18%.

So, what does this tell us? Perhaps not a lot, without some extra data to look at what people have tried eating. In most UK towns, it’s certainly easier to get hold of a calzone than it is Karelian Pie (that’s a Finnish delicacy by the way).

But here at Hunters, we do love to try new things – and, if we enjoy them, we love to introduce them to our customers! Although much of our stock is Yorkshire born and bred (with such amazing produce on our doorstep, we’d be mad not to), we do have a healthy international section, where we love to bring in new things to try. Some current favourites include Ajvar, a roasted red pepper and chilli spread from Serbia, Rose Harissa, a middle eastern spice paste made with rose petals and  8 year aged Balsamic vinegar from Modena.

And if there’s ever a favourite you find – perhaps on your travels – we always love to hear about it, and we may even be able to track it down for you. We just love good food – wherever it comes from!