Your foodie guide to the 2023 Enlighten Festival, a first for Street Food Live

And when it comes to the latter, this year has plenty of vibrant new additions.

The biggest change to this year's Enlighten food offerings is the replacement of the Night Noodle Markets with the Street Food Live.

Events ACT executive branch manager Ross Triffitt said when organisers approached the Night Noodle Markets for the 2023 event, which is being held a week later compared to last year, it was found that the March 3 to 13 timeframe clashed with a separate event in Sydney.

But this gap in the programming left room for Street Food Live, which when held in its home city of Sydney, is Australia's largest food festival.

"Street Food Live has been a part of the Vivid Festival and they provide an experience that is not just about the food but also includes some artistic installations and some neon and colour. So it'll be a great fit for the Enlighten Festival, particularly the Illuminations," Mr Triffitt said.

"They've operated at significant scale in the past and they've brought some of their famous interstate food vendors with them."

The highlights of Street Food Live's food offerings include a deep-fried chilli ice cream from Milk N' Sugar. With vanilla ice cream, coated in biscuit and panko, before being deep-fried to crispy perfection and smothered in caramel and their signature chilli concoction this dessert is creamy, salty, sweet, spicy and all-around addictive.

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Or enjoy dinner and a show with cacio e pepe from Perduto. Translating to cheese and pepper, cacio e pepe is fresh pasta tossed in a cheese wheel and topped with cracked pepper.

And the Korean corn dog craze isn't passing this year's Enlighten Festival without making an appearance. Snack Out rolls them out in various forms, from all-sausage corn dogs coated in potato batter to all-cheese for vegetarians.

"They've tried to do a real variety and it tends to have a real global flavour. So you'll see that there's Turkish, Korean, Japanese, Italian - so a real variety, and of course Dutch waffles as well," Mr Triffitt said.

Old favourite, the BentSpoke Beer Garden, also returns for another year, offering up stage performances and roving entertainment while you sit and soak up the warm autumn evenings.

And if that didn't get you excited for delicious food and amazing entertainment, there's also a line-up of local vendors across Enlighten Festival including Occasioni by Agostinis, Underground Spirits, Super Bao, Grease Monkey, Tikka Stand Food Truck, KORBQ, Yummy Thai, Papi's Italian Traveller, Jarochos and more.

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