Assembly’s George Square Gardens plays host to the inaugural Edinburgh Food Festival, part of Scotland's Year of Food and Drink. Running from Wednesday 29 July until Sunday 2 August the new festival's programme mixes food stalls and producers with a varied programme of talks, debates and presentations.

Cream o'Galloway
Hearing committed farmers explain how their food is produced somehow makes eating it that much more enjoyable. David and Wilma Finlay of Cream o'Galloway are kicking back against the impossible pressure our food system currently puts on the dairy industry with a radical rethink of farming and a fresh take on milk, ice-cream and cheese.
Fri 31 Jul, 3pm, free but ticketed

Alanda's Scottish Seafood Grill
For the duration of the Festival in August, George Square has been one of the best places to find good street food in recent years, so it feels like a natural progression for a bunch of them to be in place for this new pre-festival festival. While you might pay a Greek bailout for a seafood platter in a top-end restaurant, seafood of all types feels much better as street food. Nothing better than local lobster and chips, eaten with your fingers.

Breadshare Bakery
Geoff Crowe and Debra Riddell's groundbreaking community bakery in Portobello was the focus of an inspiring BBC Radio 4 Food Programme this week. They're often seen at markets in and around Edinburgh, so it feels natural to have them right in the heart of the city, sharing their great artisan bread and their refreshing outlook on food as a community builder. They're part of Andrew Whitley's Scotland the Bread campaign, which you can also hear about at the festival, an initiative looking at ways for Scotland to be more self-sufficient in flour and bread.
Sun 2 Aug, 2pm, free but ticketed

Common Good Food
The idea behind the Edinburgh Food Festival is to draw food into the Edinburgh Festival family not just in a commercial way, but to embrace the fact that food is truly a cultural phenomenon and worthy of a place alongside arts and entertainment. Common Good Food, a charity started recently by various members of the Fife Diet, is hosting a series of discussions examining the political, cultural and social aspects of food in Scotland.
Wed 29 Jul, 3pm; Thu 30 Jul & Fri 31 Jul, 5pm, all free but ticketed

Plan Bee
The bee is a real food hero. Industrious, bounteous, generous provider of delicious, nutritious food. Plan Bee is one of a number of projects happening around Scotland that not only celebrates great honey – often overlooked as one of our iconic national foods – but also the role of the bee as a pollinator in agriculture as a whole. Founder Warren Bader has a producer stall in George Square and will lead a talk entitled 'Money Grows on Trees.'
Sun 2 Aug, 2pm, free but ticketed

VDeep and Deeper
Hardeep Singh Kohli is an Edinburgh Fringe veteran, and he also now runs a curry bar, VDeep, in Leith. So who better to headline the line-up of entertainment running each evening of the food festival, with a new show offering his own angle on running a restaurant in the city. On other evenings there's music from Aidan O'Rourke and The Poozies, as well as cabaret from Le Haggis.
Sun 2 Aug, 8pm, £10