February and March are the most extravagant months for UAE foodies.
With the annual Gourmet Abu Dhabi currently cooking in the capital and the inaugural Dubai Food Festival dishing out a four-pronged fork of events (Taste of Dubai, Dubai Food Carnival, The Big Grill and Gulfood), culinary connoisseurs and seasoned scoffers alike will be spoilt for choice.
GN Focus wades through the glut of food-related events taking over the Emirates.
Gourmet Abu Dhabi 2014
Until Feb 19
If a sense of sophistication is generally lacking in your daily munch routine, Gourmet Abu Dhabi (GAD) is the place to rectify that.
The capital’s prestige food event is certainly one for those who enjoy getting the tux and dresses on when tucking into their food. From impeccable chateaux dinners to interactive culinary demonstrations with internationally acclaimed chefs, GAD has a lot on offer. Here are some of the dishes not to miss from the 2014 event, which is already under way across Abu Dhabi’s restaurants.
All Rhodes lead to GAD
Guests can join chef Gary Rhodes for an insight into his culinary world and try out some of his finest dishes, each of which complements a hand-picked vintage at the St Regis Abu Dhabi on Saturday.
Tickets: Dh850 per person
Roure takes you on a gastronomic journey
Two-Michelin-starred chef Christophe Roure offers diners at the Finz Restaurant in Abu Dhabi’s Beach Rotana resort on Monday a chance to travel on a French gastronomic journey, stopping off regularly for some of the chef’s favourite vintages along the way.
Tickets: Dh950 per person
Spicy meatballs
The InterContinental’s Italian restaurant Boccacio will be putting on special promotions under the guidance of British MasterChef Theo Randall from Saturday to Tuesday. Having been awarded Italian Restaurant of the Year at the London Restaurant Awards in 2013 for Theo Randall at the InterContinental, in London, Randall’s stint in the Abu Dhabi kitchen is sure to be worth going along for.
Enthused by Emirati cuisine
For a taste of one of the UAE’s brightest home-grown culinary protégés, you’ll want to head to Khulood Atiq’s lunch at the Eastern Mangroves Hotel on Sunday. A one-off masterclass in the nuances and generosity of modern Emirati fusion cuisine is a treat for any foodie from this part of the world, so it’s worth a butcher’s hook at the very least.
Dubai Food Carnival
Feb 21-22
Venue: Dubai Festival City
It’s another first for Dubai. The inaugural Dubai Food Carnival is all set to kick off the two-month long Dubai Food Festival extravaganza.
Similar in layout to the longer-running Taste of Dubai, the carnival offers a plethora of food pavilions and various tastings, interactive cookery workshops, competitions and general foodie stuffs in an all-encompassing social setting with live music, which is open to families.
The highlight of the two-day billing is the celebrity head-to-head cook-off. Larger-than-life John Torode and chef Silvena Rowe from the BBC’s MasterChef and Chopped series respectively, and Manal Al Alem — who’s garnered a reputation as the Queen of the Arabian kitchen — will all cross their spatulas in an interesting, and surely the first-ever Arab-Antipode-Anglo-Bulgarian cook-off.
Rowe is also leading a locally sourced charge. In an attempt to bring about a change to the stat of 98 per cent of food in Dubai being imported, she has put together an organic menu where 98 per cent of the produce used is locally farmed at Carnival Rowe – a specially designed celebrity restaurant. Rowe has also teamed up with Greenheart Organic Farms to run Silvena’s Souq, a dedicated organic market where carnival-goers can purchase fresh, locally grown produce.
The Big Grill
Feb 27-28
Venue: Emirates Golf Club
Other than an antacid and a couch in a darkened room, few things pique the curiosity of a sunburned and hungover expat more than the prospect of barbecued food. What could be better? Answer: Two days of non-stop, fantastically flame-grilled food.
But make no mistake, this new BBQ concept to Dubai is not for the faint-hearted. The celebration of all things barbecue — as it’s marketed — is packed to the hilt with gluttonous burger-eating competitions, overly competitive BBQ grill-offs and some loud, contemporary music in the backdrop — perhaps to distract from the burning ribs or patties on the grill.
Playing the spoons
Another intriguing indulgence on the Carnival’s menu is Mina Liccione’s comedy set. The star of Broadway hit Stomp, who has been dubbed by some as Dubai’s first lady of comedy, uses kitchen utensils to perform a percussion-with-hammour spectacle likely to confuse and enthuse in equal measure.
Spice it up with the Beat the Heat competition. Participants are encouraged to find out how many raw chillies they can eat (ranging from poxy bird’s-eye to the ominously named Ghost Chilli) on a stage in front of a potentially disturbed audience: If risking your taste buds for the rest of your eating life is your kind of thing, look no further.
Gulfood
Feb 23-27
Venue: World Trade Centre Exhibition Halls
Into its 27th year of running, Gulfood has become the largest food and hospitality trade show in the Middle East. It’s the serious, business turn in the Dubai Food Festival river that flows for 23 days in the emirate.
So, if you’re interested in what’s going on beyond the plate and the funny hats worn in the kitchen, trawl around the Trade Centre’s vast halls to experience both sides of the spoon and find out how Dubai is becoming a gastronomic hub.
Gulfood 2014 will also host the International Halal Conference, a topic of mounting importance for the global food and beverage industry in the region.
Coffee shop culture
But it’s not all about number-crunching and white-collar rules. Happily for Dubai’s ever-growing coffee shop culture, one of the more interactive presentations at the show this year is the Barista Bonanza and Coffee Council — a series of dedicated demonstrations and educational presentations aimed at showcasing coffee in all its splendour. The Speciality Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) will deliver a series of seminars to introduce its new, three-tiered Coffee Diploma System on The Coffee Stage.
Coffee enthusiasts and trade professionals will have an opportunity to participate in the Coffee Diploma System programme, learn more about brewing techniques, attend coffee-tasting workshops, and gain knowledge of the fast-growing green coffee market.
Taste of Dubai
March 13-15
Venue: Dubai Media City Amphitheatre
Eric Lanlard and Jean Christophe Novelli are headlining at the Dubai Media City Amphitheatre for Taste this year: certainly part of the reason the organisers are expecting a whopping 27,000 visitors.
Elsewhere the Kenwood Cooking School offers visitors the chance to do it, break it, or mess it up, with ‘it’ obviously standing for a recipe of their choice, under the watchful eye of yet more celebrity chefs.
