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| Come join us at the Cooking Festival |
I'll let you in on a little secret, I've always wanted to meet all the chefs of Lebanon. Why? because I cherish these men and women who dedicate their lives to feeding others (make sense?)...
I am now heading the Slow Food Beirut Convivia, slowly but surely with the help of a few volunteers. Hopefully this year, if the political situation remains more or less stable (meaning bombs don't fall on our heads), then Slow Food Beirut will host each month an event dealing with food and the people who make it happen...
Our first initiation is at the 2013 Cooking Fair! The good people who also organize Horeca have made this festival a yearly event. It is growing from year to year and people seem to get interested. Last year I made bread for good folks to show them that it's really not such a big deal. This year because of my new status, I want to focus on spreading the good word of Slow Food.
The talk I am preparing for the festival will introduce chefs and others to the philosophy of Slow Food. That said, we will get memberships and discuss new year strategies. I would like to get each chef involved in an event and try to bring them closer to a farmer, a small scale producer, an artisan. Is it so hard? It might be because knowing the restaurant business (I've had my share), consistency is important. We, as Slow Food Beirut, have to build this trust and create a strong link and relationship.
Tony Ramy, who is quite famous in the Syndicate of Restaurants in Lebanon pointed out to me an example which I will use during my talk. Once he was on an outing in a restaurant with his family in a local village restaurant near St. Charbel... He discovered that all the food he was eating was imported including the potatoes, the meat, even some of the pickles, ... He felt cheated and very frustrated. What has become of our heritage, of our pride goods, of our culinary past???
I suggest we all get our acts together and work on safeguarding our culinary traditions, here and now. (Before IT IS TOO LATE!!!!)...
Hope to see many of you there!
