This year's programme for the Crave Sydney International Food Festival again included a two-day World Chefs Showcase on the 6th and 7th of October and it featured a veritable rain of stars from The World's 50 Best Restaurants List. During the local vs. visitors “match”, visiting chefs delighted the participants who took notes as if possessed!
With Matt Moran, Mark Best, Peter Kuruvita, Alessandro Pavoni, David Thompson and Colin Fassnidge, among others, the Sydney dining scene is now clearly an international player in the first division. Endemic ingredients and native techniques, with special mention to that used for fish by Mark Best, showed the characteristics of the cuisine of a blended country.
Visitors Massimo Bottura (Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy) and Jordi Roca (El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain) exhibited, respectively, tears of emotion and bursts of laughter. Bottura with his carnal intercourse with the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, made a touching presentation mixing his passion for art, for Parmigiano Reggiano and the Po river, which shapes all the terroirit encounters on its path.It is not a coincidence that its present name derives from the Latin Padus which means “digging”.
Roca, with boundless energy, could be nicknamed "suggestion box" or "an idea a minute." With unusual imagination, he regaled the audience with his inventions and crazy ideas. He did a presentation and a “talk” with the tone of the smoothest and sweetest deserts in the world. His latest idea? Rocambolesc, a premium ice cream shop halfway between childhood memories and a funfair. Oh! Gabriele Bonci, David Thompson, more Thai than Thai, and grandissimo(the great) Antonio Carluccio were also there.
Also on the programme in 2013, "Thoughts & Talks", a very interesting, interactive and surprising initiative. Do you want to hear about the ideas and issues at the heart of today's food world with the world chefs and key thinkers about food and wine? Then, Sydney is your place. With a format of a 45 minute round table followed by 15 minutes of questions from the audience, David Chang, Colman Andrews, Andrea Petrini, Ben Shewry, Terry Durack, Jonathan Gold, Nicholas Lander (and myself) exchanged and debated topics such as: "Food writing and reading in a multi-platform world: where next?", "Creating a food culture", "Supermarkets, can we live with them? Can we live without them?", "The Art of the restaurateur," "The coffee bar dinner at the end of the universe "," The new naturalists: how our invention should be minimum?".
Maria Canabal
Talks & Thoughts. Photos Credits: Cravesiff
Posted by Maria Canabal, a food, travel and lifestyle journalist who lives in Paris, Madrid and Copenhagen. Columnist at Monocle and contributor to Apicius, Gourmet and Gastronomad, she lived and worked in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. Since 2010, Maria Canabal is member of the jury for the tittle of BEST SOMMELIER of SPAIN and earned the Literature Award “St. John” in 2011. - Follow her on twitter
