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Saturday, November 15, 2014
Saturday, November 8, 2014
A Taste of Abu Dhabi
Saturday,
November 8th, 2014
Post
by Kim
In
the UAE, food is abundant and diverse. The Taste
of Abu Dhabi Festival is just an example of that statement.
Before
leaving Al Ain on Friday morning for the festival, Adam and I had a delicious breakfast at La Brioche, a French restaurant next to
our residence complex. Nothing like eggs
benedict to start off what would be another great day!
Then
we hopped in our friends’ car and off we went to Abu Dhabi city! The festival took place at Yas Island -- the
very same island where we enjoyed Yas Waterworld (October 27th, 2014 post)
and visited my relative from Canada (October 19th, 2014 post). At the festival entrance, we were greeted by men on stilts… Adam
now knows what it feels like to stand next to him :)
The Taste of Abu Dhabi is essentially a festival featuring foods from different vendors and cuisines. There were a multitude of kiosks under tents. One of the first ones we saw had Chef Reza Mahammad from the Food Network TV channel, cooking in front of a crowd.
Other
famous chefs and sous-chefs, including one of Gordon Ramsay’s sous-chefs,
offered small-group cooking lessons. For
instance, some of our good friends from our residence were shown how to make
cucumber ketchup. They said it was pretty tasty! Adam and I chose not to sign up for the
lessons though, because the waiting line was about one hour.
The
festival had many food kiosks. You can
see a number here:
Many of these kiosks featured free food samples such as lemon sorbet, sausages and meat pastries, caramel popcorn, and soft drinks. Other food items could be bought with cash or with vouchers. In our case, we had VIP tickets to the festival, so Adam and I each had 3 food vouchers and 3 drink vouchers. With cash and with our vouchers, we enjoyed wagyu beef sliders, French fries, fried shrimp and also:
Chicken
shawarma wrap…
Grilled
sea bass with couscous + tuna tayaki…
Lobster
lasagna…
Beer
(of course)…
And
coconut water. Watching the vendor chop
up that coconut like it was a breeze was a spectacle.
Of course, food is best enjoyed with music performances and the company of friends.
The
sun came down, but there was a still a large crowd at the festival, as you can
see here.
As
the evening progressed, we ran out of food vouchers but still had plenty of
drink vouchers. One of our good friends,
Youcef, was given many drinks vouchers by another individual who had left the
festival earlier. Try as we might, we
couldn’t stomach another Tiger beer (the only beer that could be purchased with
a voucher); if only we could have traded someone a drink voucher for more food
vouchers!
Nevertheless,
we left the festival quite content from the good food, atmosphere, and
company. We then headed with our friends
to a shisha bar in Abu Dhabi city. It
was a WONDERFUL and relaxing venue, with mostly local people. We sat outside on a terrace, enjoying shisha,
Turkish coffee, Moroccan mint tea, the cool shore breeze, and the night skyline
of the city.
Most
of all, we enjoyed being among great friends and our great conversations with
them. Our awesome buddy, Mehdi, took
these beautiful pictures of the night.
(By the way, for anyone in the UAE who is interested in getting really
good family pictures, MEHDI IS THE MAN!
You can check out some of his other photography and contact him through
his Facebook page: <https://www.facebook.com/mehdiamaniphotos>).
I
particularly like this picture of Youcef, after discovering in his
pocket that he still had a food voucher from the festival! With his new mustache, doesn't he look like Wario
from the video game Super Mario Land 2 ?
(Wario
picture source: < http://www.mariowiki.com/User_talk:Purity_Essence/Archive_2>)
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