The Bluff Oyster & Food Festival is back!

After an enforced break last year due to alert level restrictions, the 2021 Festival will take place in Bluff on Saturday 22 May.

The event is sold out, with many people electing to roll their blue admission tickets that could not be used last year over to this year while the remaining tickets that were available sold out within an hour when they went on sale earlier this year.

For those that have tickets an awesome day is in store with a fantastic array of food including Bluff oysters, other seafood goodies and non-seafood treats. Musical entertainment will enhance the atmosphere throughout the day while the famous Oyster Events – with races for oyster openers and eating races for members of the public - will also entertain the crowds.

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Bluff Oysters top the list of food offerings with cooked and raw oysters, oyster balls, Oyster Rockefeller, Oyster Mini Burgers and Creamy Seafood & Oyster pies. There is blue cod, paua, whitebait, scallops, salmon, kina, crayfish, muttonbirds, salmon, squid and more. For those not so fond of seafood take your choice of pizza, Korean Fried Chicken Skewers, Venison and Pork Belly Burgers and more.

Tere Ngu will lead proceedings on the main stage this year after the recent passing of popular, long-time MC, John Graham. 

Gates will open at 10.30am with the Bluff Oyster due to be piped in as is tradition at 11am. Following another tradition, the Ode To The Oyster, the Bluff School Kapa Haka Group will perform. Following on throughout the day will be well known muso’s Ma Bradshaw and Darcy Kerr, getting together as The Freshies while the Julian Temple Band and Capitol City form the remainder of the musical line up.

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Julian Temple was born into a musical family in San Francisco but found his way to Dunedin where he formed a band along with several keen fellow varsity students. Their last three albums have charted in the New Zealand Top Ten and they have toured extensively throughout New Zealand, Australia and the USA for the best part of twenty years, performing a wide variety of musical genres.

Capitol City is an 11-piece band which hails from Christchurch but has strong southern connections with names such as Shannon Cooper-Garland and Phil Doublet plus the Bluff born and bred Corey Cross.

Last year in the absence of the Festival many people who could not attend held their own small gatherings in their own part of the country to mark the date but the real thing is back this year on Saturday 22 May.