PUBLISHED June 26th, 2017 06:00 am | UPDATED July 28th, 2024 01:38 am
The iconic Campuhan Ridge was the setting for the third edition of the increasingly popular Ubud Food Festival. From 12th to 14th May 2017, more than 9000 people from around the world descended upon the cultural heart of Bali to celebrate Indonesian cooking and cuisine. Across the weekend, festivalgoers enriched themselves with a bevy of free and ticketed events, ranging from cooking demonstrations and workshops to food tours and even film screenings.
A permanent feature of the Ubud Food Festival, the cooking demonstrations at Teatre Kuliner were a crowd favourite, with almost every session leaving only standing room for avid audiences. Indonesian chefs and ingredients took centre stage here, with highlights including a lontong sayur by Fernando Sindu and contemporary fish soup by Ibu Sisca Soewitomo. The Jungle Chef from Papua, Charles Toto, also conducted a lively session with live sago worms foraged from the Papuan highlands, and an unusual sago pizza.
At the Kitchen Stage, Petty Elliot’s coconut pudding and Bara Pattiradjawane’s traditional Javanese cake, wingko babat, delighted dessert-lovers in attendance. International chefs also took the chance to showcase their talents with the help of fresh Bali produce, with a Filipino-style squid by Chele González and Cambodian-style black sticky rice and scallops by Joannes Rivière to satisfy festivalgoers.
Attendees also got insight on the backend of the food industry, with edifying panels on a variety of environmental and sustainable supply issues in the festival’s Think, Talk, Taste series. Topics such as regenerative agriculture, food systems, and local and global ecological challenges were discussed and explored, leading to fruitful and community-driven solutions, and major takeaways for everyone present!
Apart from the main festival activities, special Events before and after the festival event kept the hype going and attendees’ anticipation up. Most notably, collaborations between Indonesian and international chefs brought a new perspective to the preparation of local ingredients, and allowed diners to try out new flavour profiles and cooking styles in settings such as the Lovacore, which hosted Philippine’s Chele González. Celebrity chefs Fernando Sindu and Erwan Wijaya also worked together to put a contemporary twist on the local cuisine, and Indonesia’s exotic fruits were put to use by Raka Ambarawan from The Night Rooster.
In essence a celebration of Indonesian cooking, culture, and cuisine, the Ubud Food Festival brought audiences together with the unifying power of food. From procuring ingredients to plating up final presentations, the passion and talent of the chefs and organisers was palpable, leaving participants equal parts enchanted and excited for next year’s instalment.