Dubai should be truly called the wonderland of the UAE. It has everything right from shopping to night life to restaurants to museums to golf courses to beaches for the tourist. While we all may have heard of the Dubai Shopping Festival, many of us are not aware that it also hosts the Dubai Food Festival each year. Now this is obvious as shopping and eating go hand in hand. So why would Dubai leave its tourists and shopping enthusiasts hungry, isn’t it?
Dubai Food Festival mainly concentrates on local and regional produce. It is held for about 15 days every year around the time Dubai Shopping Festival is on. The food festival celebrates the best of the regional and world food with food markets, cookery workshops, tastings and dinners. It is the perfect place to go after a hard day at shopping as the events start from early evening and continue till midnight.
This food festival was started in 2006 as a part of the Dubai Shopping Festival. The market stalls provide food that you can buy or choose to consume there. A wide variety of food products such as cheese, olive-oils, preserves, jams, squashes, chutneys, pickles and many more exotic food items are offered for sale. Those yearning for local street food can go in for roasts or paella. Restaurants also set up street side cafes especially for the festival to dish up delicacies from all over UAE.
In 2009, the Dubai Food Festival was planned with the ‘eco-friendly’ theme in mind and the organizers called it –Better Food, Less Waste. The aim was to educate the visitors about different methods in which they could reduce the waste food and packaging. This effort needs to be appreciated as a step towards conserving the environment. The star of the show was the attempt to break the Guinness World Record by creating the largest Dessert Buffet of 2009 varying desserts. This was done in collaboration with the Emirates Culinary Guild.
The highlights of the festival were sampling Sundays, buffet Tuesdays, live cooking tents, food market, the demonstration area and the much-liked competitions held annually for young chefs. There is one more event known as ‘friends of the festival’. Anybody from a housewife to a budding chef can display their culinary skills on this platform. The good news is that restaurants are not allowed here. Isn’t that a good reason for you to visit Dubai Food Festival next year?