Distinct flavors of Southeast Asia come to Seoul : Asean food fest brings all of the region’s best dishes to one place
Chefs from 10 countries of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations pose for the Asean Culinary Festival put together by the Asean-Korea Centre, which is held until Sunday at Coex in southern Seoul. [ASEAN-KOREA CENTRE]
To help locals take a quick culinary trip through Southeast Asia the Asean-Korea Centre set up a festival zone in Hall B with each country offering two different dishes for visitors, as part of the 32nd edition of the Korea World Travel Fair.
“Everybody can search and you can find all kinds of information, but you can’t google taste,” said William Wongso, an Indonesian culinary expert who helped organize the festival. “Food is easier to share than any other cultural item, and it can lead people to have a better understanding of other things, like economy,” he said, because food is an everyday item.
The event is an extension of the culinary festival the organization hosted last year. This year’s event is more meaningful as Asean, the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations, made up of 10 countries including Brunei, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Laos, is celebrating its 50-year anniversary. The association has designated this year as Visit Asean year and has been working attract more visitors to its countries.
To offer more to those returning to the culinary event and inspire people to spend their holidays there, the organizer has added coffee and tea made with beans and leaves from 10 different countries as part of the event’s offerings. The “Barista Show” will have a coffee expert on hand to demonstrate how to make coffee while explaining each country’s unique variations of the drink. The sessions will be held twice a day at 11:10 a.m. and 2:40 p.m. Each show will last about 20 minutes.
Hwang Ho-rim, a coffee expert who roasted beans and prepared coffee for the event, said the Indonesian coffee prepared for this event has a good balance of sweet and sour flavor, based on the particular beans he got for the event, adding that even beans from the same country can taste differently. While Vietnamese and Cambodian coffees have nutty and grainy flavors, beans from Laos and Myanmar seem to have lime-like sour taste that makes their coffee unique. Beans from Thailand have rose-like scent and those from Brunei have more woody smell.
“Each country has its own characteristics and this is a good chance to compare different flavors in the same place,” said Hwang.
Coffee made with beans from Thailand and Singapore will be offered to visitors today, and those from the Philippines and Brunei will be available on Sunday alongside tea from Malaysia. Coffee from other countries may be served upon request, but it may take some time for baristas to prepare them.
Left: Delegates taste food prepared by chefs who traveled to Seoul from their home countries in Southeast Asia. Middle: Many locals come for the Asean Culinary Festival to get a taste of exotic food. Right: Ten different kinds of coffees and teas from 10 different Asean countries are served at the food festival. [PARK SANG-MOON]
Indonesia will offer its most famous fried rice dish called Nasi Goreng, while the Philippines is preparing to serve adobo, which is marinated pork served with rice. Vietnam will bring out its fried spring roll cha gio and Myanmar will introduce its Shan noodle, which gets its name from the region the dish originates. Singapore is the one country will offer a dessert with their famous toast with kaya jam made with coconut and milk tea.
Many of the dishes on hand are famous all around the world, while some may be know to very few outside of the Asean region. The chefs and the organizer aimed to bring out the distinct “traditional” flavors of each country.
“There are ways to make the dishes more modern, but we made them as traditional as possible, because we wanted to show what’s most common first,” said Budi Kurniawan, a food and beverage consultant who cooked for the Indonesian booth.
“We wanted to show people the taste that’s commonly available not only at restaurants, but also on the street.”
Chef Chumpol Jangprai from Thailand stated that the traditional taste of Asean food fits well with the Korean palate, as they have some elements in common, such as the use of sweet and sour flavors in food.
Chefs from 10 countries will be at the booths to cook and serve food, and they will also give short explanations of the food and even answer any questions that visitors might have.
What do you do if you like the food you taste? Then pack your bags and book a trip!
“Food has become one of the strongest attractions for tourism, and Asean food will inspire Koreans to travel to Asean, a region which is simply put, a food heaven,” said Secretary-General Kim Young-sun of the Asean-Korean Centre.
To further inspire people to book their tickets for a trip to any of the Asean countries and to show what they have to offer, the center has also prepared the Asean Culture and Tourism Photo Exhibition, which was put together with photos submitted by both professional and amateur photographers.
BY LEE SUN-MIN [summerlee@joongang.co.kr]
For more information about the festival on the Internet, go to www.aseankorea.org or go to www.kotfa.co.kr, or call (02) 757-6161.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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