Food festival tests the tastebuds

Expert taste buds that can sort the wheat from the chaff will be rewarded at this year’s sixth annual Taste of Dubai festival.Visitors to the three-day event, which ends today, have been ‘dining in the dark’, eating three different canapes in pitch black before being asked to pick out the 30 ingredients used from a list of 100. The prize is not to be sniffed at, with a private dinner for six, worth Dh5,000, cooked in the winner’s house by celebrity chef Andy Campbell.Director of Turret Media, which organises the festival, Chris Fountain said the new feature had proved to be a hit, with the top score so far 21 correct selections.This year’s festival was a “bigger, better event than ever before”.“It’s a full mix, young and old, a real family event, people come for the day and what they like about it is as well as tasting good food they get to meet the chefs they see on the TV (and) cook with them.”With 30 restaurants taking part, it was the largest Taste of Dubai yet, Fountain said. The venue was 30 per cent more full than the previous year, now taking up all the floor space at the Dubai Media City Amphitheatre. “Our visitor numbers are well up on where they were this time last year,” he said. Taste festivals happened all around the world, but Dubai was a perfect place to host such an event, Fountain said.The world’s leading chefs work out of here...Dubai’s got an eclectic mix of different cuisines and that’s a great backdrop for the festival.”The thousands who had already been through the doors were a mix of residents, locals and tourists, he said. This year’s visitor target was 25,000, a few extra people up from the 23,000 who attended last year.“Already I can tell you we’re on track to hitting that number.”Taste of Dubai is offering more than 150 dishes, from dumplings and sushi to lamb and goat, with 10 celebrity chefs on hand to give demonstrations including Chanel 4 in Britain’s Gizzi Erskine and British-based Indian chef Reza Mahammad, who has a show on Food Network. The Counterfeit Beatles and The Noisettes are also scheduled to play, alongside fire dancers and samba performers source : khaleejtimes.com