The Niagara Lavender Festival took place this past weekend from July 7th to 8th.
We made the trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake on the Sunday, having ordered the World Traveler pass in advance. This included ten tasting-size food and drink items, as well as other goodies.
The lavender fields were in peak bloom – evidently these fields were reserved for essential oil production, as those grown for culinary uses had been harvested the previous month.
We made our way around the festival filled with vendor booths selling items ranging from clothing to plants. We kept our eyes out for the ticket holder tasting booths, as some of them were easy to miss.
The first items we tried were the rosemary meatball and lavender butter tart. The first bite of the meatball was delicious, but the salty sauce resulted in progressively less-enjoyable subsequent bites. The lavender flavour was apparent in the butter tart, but the small bite size filling was unable to satisfy my craving.
We moved on to the lavender cannoli and cupcake booth – both items utilized lavender-infused cream/icing, but I preferred the taste of the cupcake, which had lavender sprinkled into the cake as well.
The next item was arguably the most anticipated – the lavender pizza. This booth had the longest line, and served slices of white pizza topped with potato, mozzarella, goat cheese, and a sprinkling of lavender. It was probably the one item that made me consider purchasing the full-size serving, but we decided to try all the other items first.
We located the cake booth, and got the lemongrass and lavender cheesecake, lavender flour-less chocolate cake, and the mystery tasting in one go. The cheesecake was a delicious bite of rich cheese cut with a tang of lemongrass, while the flour-less chocolate cake was rich like a gooey brownie. The mystery tasting was a raspberry mousse-like concoction that was extremely soft and melted in the mouth.
We were finally nearing the end of the tastings; I found the ice cream stand, but wanted to find the soda one before ending off with ice cream. Unfortunately, what we found instead was the lavender botanical sparkling water – not sure if it was an error on the card, or if they ran out of the soda, but the sparkling water was a bit of a miss for everyone in the party.
The ice cream was a peach ice cream infused with lavender; of all items, the lavender flavour was the lightest here. It was a welcome cool-down from standing in the sun all morning.
We joined the performance under the tent just as the singer was wrapping up, and next up was a lady from Arvinda’s who about to cook an Indian dish with lavender. She ended up making chaat with lavender-infused raita, and samples were distributed to the crowd.
After the cooking show, we joined a quick tour about the lavender farm before heading to the gift shop. At this point, I headed over the the antique store on-site, while the others decided to purchase some lavender sprays.
We sipped some rosé at the winery beside the makeshift parking lot, before deciding to head homeward. This ended up being a lucky decision, as there was later an incident at the hayfield where we had parked. Glad everyone was safe.
Overall, the festival was fun but a little underwhelming. Tastings were fun, but leaned heavily towards the sweet side, so I found myself feeling full but not satisfied at the end of it. If you really love lavender, you might enjoy this more, but I had about my yearly fill here.
orangecane 