Outside the tea shop, we noticed a sign for the 2009 PIFF. It started the next day. Interesting… We went online, got the details and decided to stay an extra day in Penang.
PIFF was three things:
Food Fest – i.e. companies trying to pitch you on their latest and greatest food inventions both digestible (think processed food) and machine (I saw my first ever “rice paste” maker – I didn’t even know I needed that!)
Food Vendor Special – 100 of the best food vendors in Penang. In reality, the food was good, but not great
12th Annual Battle of the Chefs – A series of competitions between chefs. It went for three days and had battles in pastry, cake, western food course, western pacific entree (meat) and western pacific entree (seafood), and also one on potato, surprisingly (?) sponsored by The American Association for the Potato or something like that.
We happened to catch a lot of the Western Pacific Seafood battles and they were pretty interesting. I’m not sure of the rules exactly, but you basically had an hour to create your best seafood dish. You were responsible for all your own ingredients so if you wanted to spend a bunch of money, you could bring foie gras and cavier, etc.
Some chefs were interesting to watch and others were clearly pretty amateur (though by amateur i mean in the comp since. They all were pro chefs).
I could tell you the rest or you can see it in pictures. let’s go with the latter.
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