Ubud Food Festival 2015: The Epitome of Good Food

The inaugural food festival earlier this month concluded on a high note. For those of you who could not make it to the island, we reported this three-day festivity of food right from the heart of Ubud, Bali. The organiser mentioned thousands headed to central Bali for the festival, and for so many good reasons.

Day One has already given us high-profile names from Indonesia’s food scene, with Sri Owen, a celebrated Indonesian cookbook author, who recently turned 80 years old, flew in from the U.K. to Bali to attend Ubud Food Festival. I posted a photo of her on my social feeds and straightaway so many friends in the F&B industry texted me to say how their careers literally began after reading her books on Indonesian cuisine. We’ll get more of her later, but in case you’re too curious now, she has a website for you to check on.

Bondan Winarno, a senior journalist/TV host/food aficionado graced the Press Call panel as well. Later that evening, he presented Sri the festival’s first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award. Will Meyrick, the man behind Mama San, E&O and the Ubud-crazed Hujan Locale joined the panel and I can assure you he’s a busy guy throughout the weekend, throwing booked-out lunches and dinners every single day.

  
Janet DeNeefe, the founder-director, together with her team did all the hard work planning and bringing big shot names from all over Asia to the festival. She made it possible for everyone to experience almost everything in three days — food forums, cooking class, masterclass, exclusive luncheons and dinners, food bazaar and even food-themed movie screenings.

I started Day One with something different. I was invited to do a side tour to Sababay, Bali-based winery, which happened to be one of the festival partners as well.

 
I couldn’t resist the tempting words of Yohan Handoyo, Indonesia’s respected wine connoisseur, when he invited me: “We’ll let you crush the grapes, all six tonnes of them, by your feet.”

So there I was, doing my first-ever wine tour, sipping through glasses of reds and whites and my favourite Moscato. The winery is run using modern techniques and fancy equipment, which is very visible if you go inside the factory. Perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the tour is to know that if one wants to start a wine company, one must come with a hefty funding. One crushing machine can set you back a Rolls Royce for that matter.

Back to the centre of actions in Ubud, Chris Salans from the kitchens of Mozaic highlighted Day One’s cooking demo at Indus Restaurant. His establishment in Ubud is dearly associated with his name, so his demo was definitely not to be missed as he showed how Seasonal Mango Sorbet and Crystalised Tempe in a Sweet Kluwek Sauce were made. At times, a lot of ooohhs were distinctively audible from the audience during this session.

Another highlight of Day One includes photography workshop by Fellexandro Ruby (follow his feed on Instagram for daily Insta-worthy dose). A respected writer and avid food photographer, Ubud Food Festival gave a chance to 15 lucky participants to learn from the man himself. He started off with the basics of photography and as the day went by, he moved gear to gear to show how Instagram works for him, which revolves around his skilful food styling.

Day Two commenced with Indonesian’s Selera Nusantara cooking demonstration by a man who calls himself a fake cook – Rahung Nasution. The room, though airy, smelled of extraordinary ingredients such as the bright-looking ginger flower (Indonesians call it kecombrang or honje).

Rahung cooked Pinadar, a Batak Toba signature dish that originally uses fresh blood as one of the ingredients. Rahung smartly put his own twist to the dish by replacing blood with prawn and exotic spices. More interestingly, the demo finished off with a Sababay wine pairing. It was indeed one fine Saturday morning.

Bondan Winarno graced the Ubud Food Festival stage one more time. He shared the stage with Tria Nuragustina (senior food journalist of a leading women’s magazine) and in a Food Forum discussing “Everything is Enak (delicious)” food writing. He briefed the audience, most of them aspiring writers, “You have to dig deeper. Never settle for what you know now. Always improve your food knowledge, otherwise you’ll write nothing that results in nothing.”

This was the perfect pre-afternoon session for me. I surely dug deeper from the next cooking demo.

   
I had been waiting for this cooking demo weeks before the event and it is safe to say that 2am:dessertbar’s Chef Janice Wong from Singapore was the highlight of my Ubud Food Festival duty. She rocked the demo in and out.

She started off the one-hour showcase by giving out a small cup of caramel sauce to be shared with the whole audience. It was a sold-out event so you can imagine how that cup went from one seat to another – gone too fast, and tasted so so good. You can tell she has been doing a lot of demos from the way she calmly cut through her ginger flower, coconut, pour over concocted gula melaka.

The whole session was centred around a “No Reference” theme, which simply means she did not bring anything from Singapore as she got everything from Bali. The idea came to her hours before the show, and her fantastic team did the necessary to serve the champion: Pistachio Cake with Gula Melaka, Kaya and Fresh Herbs Crumble.

In an exclusive interview shortly after the demo, she told me, “Going to Bali for the festival is an obvious decision as the people here are so lucky due to the abundant produce”. When asked for advice for aspiring young chefs, Janice described her career has been all about mastering ingredients, going out to see the world and master the techniques from the best. After a few wefies with Janice, and of course the interview, I can see why this woman is Asia’s Best Pastry Chef for two years in a row. She rocks.

As if Day Two hasn’t exposed the best talents already, Ubud Food Festival gave us a rendang cook-off. It’s no secret that Malaysia and Indonesia shared the same palate, culinary history and quality produces. In this house-packed ‘battle’, representatives from the two countries entertained the audience impeccably.

With William Wongso and Sri Owen present (both are Indonesia’s respected culinary figures), the show was clearly on fire as Sri questioned Chef Wan’s curry-like rendang. All for laughs and the sake of delicious flavors as Rahung won the votes of those lucky rendang first-timers who fairly judged which one they liked more. Chef Wan was indeed a busy guy throughout the three-day event as he brought TV crew, worked at the kitchen of Hujan Locale for HSBC’s special dinner and the next thing you know, he sat down in a Minang restaurant enjoying his sambal.

Words like umami, puree and saccarine pringles managed to wow the crowd during Day Three’s Ryan Clift’s cooking demonstration. Hailing from Singapore’s The Tippling Club, Ryan brought fancy machines on stage. As much as he hated the word ‘molecular’, his dishes are simply put, molecular. He passed around some ingredients before finally cooking his The Onion Ring, which he called ‘flavours of fun’. The sauce lyonnaise was made from pureed onion. He showed videos of his restaurant back in Singapore and prompted culinary enthusiasts to visit. He said he would say hello. His session was mind-blowing, to say the least, as he moved from one part to another smoothly, all while he shot on those fancy culinary terms.

If I were asked to forget Ubud Food Festival and replace that weekend with something else, like a Coldplay concert, I would not give them up. It was seriously that fantastic. For those of you who, again, missed on this event, mark your calendar as 2016 event will come in mid-year again. Going to Ubud Food Festival is like a reminder of why my new year resolution on diet may not work after all.