Yu Bo’s Sichuan banquet at Sydney International food festival
Is it possible to talk about Sydney and Melbourne without making a comparison of which is best? I think not.
And so is the debate between which was the best food festival this year: the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival or Sydney.
I went to both on freebies, although sponsored by NSW Tourism this trip was $$$$$$$$$$.
I think Sydney wins for its focus and theming on Asia and perhaps reflecting the food culture of Sydney, which is a far more Asian city than Melbourne which is still mostly obsessed with Europe.
Also from what I saw of both, despite the big named chefs attending, there were more hits in Sydney and misses in Melbourne.
The two parts I really paid attention to where the Chinese chefs and the sessions which highlighted something I’d always had been conscious of but never really thought about – the influence of Japan on French chefs.
I’ll tackle France next post.
Here I want to talk about the woman I want to run away to China with author Fuchsia Dunlop, who undoubtably in my mind was the star of the festival.
Quite simply if you want to know anything about Chinese, or Sichuan food Dunlop is the woman.
I sat in two sessions with her, one in which she demonstrated dishes including the delicious Fish Fragrant Eggplant, which isn’t fishing but prepared using a method usually used for fish.
Dai Shuang’s porcupine buns as recorded by Amanda from Spread My Butter
The most exciting session was with Sichuan chef Yu Po from Chengdu and his wife Dai Shuang’s (Yu Bo’s wife) porcupine buns, where each spine is cut using shears.
Some of Australia’s top chefs were mesmerised while Dunlop explained Yu Po’s Sichuan food and food culture in China. He presented some 25 dishes, not the chilli laden clichés from Sichuan but each artfully carved, tied or sculpted from the most humble of ingredients.It’s worth taking a look at my Flickr group of dishes here.
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On a slightly-related note, I’m a bit disappointed with the Melbourne 2010 lineup. I got very excited after David Chang and the vauge ‘America’ theme was announced, hoping for a Thomas Keller or Grant Achatz. David Kinch would be fascinating, but not enough to get me over there from Perth I’m afraid.
You can’t have Fuchsia, she’s mine.
(Her recipes work beautifully, too)
She’s not only good with Sichuan, but the revolutionary Cookbook has lots of Hunan dishes amongst others. She is good. Did you score a seat at the Claude’s dinner? Had heard about the dinner back in February, but Mrs T had to celebrate her big birthday down in Melbourne that weekend! Also missed out on Sergi Arola with Brent Savage
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The Japanese have been a big influence on the Spaniards too.
The SIFF certainly did have a great line up for their inaugural festival – hope it continues.
It is amazing how the chinese only uses the cleaver for everything. He has fantastic knife skills. And you have reminded to get the book Fuchsia Dunlop.
Hi Ed
Nice post.
I have just one question – when you said “I went to both on freebies, although sponsored by NSW Tourism this trip was $$$$$$$$$$.”
Did you mean that it was more expensive for you to go to the SIFF than to Melbourne?
Cheers FS
I was not aware Melbourne had an International Food Festival.
Seems to me it is known as the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, and it will be interesting to see where the rest of the posts take this discussion.
Ben, Corrected.
Interestingly Sydney didn’t address wine so Melbourne wins there.
And outside the main weekend people felt it was a bit all over the place.
As with the reasons for that error, I need to find more time to post and shall but more about the individual events and dinners.
Hi, I think Sydney wins more visitors in food festival due to its mouth watering dishes.