AILYN AGONIA

DOHA THE Indonesian Embassy in Doha and the Holiday Villa Hotel and Residence is jointly hosting a month-long food festival of diverse Indonesian cuisines, representing different regions of the Southeast Asian nation.

The food festival — inaugurated by Third Secretary at the Indonesian Embassy Mohammad al Aula and General Manager of Holiday Villa Joey Chen — opened at the Legenda Restaurant at Holiday Villa on Thursday.

“Indonesia consists of more than 7,000 islands and 300 ethnic groups.

Each region has its own cuisine — spicy, sour and sweet — which caters to different tastes. We are promoting this diverse aspect of our culinary culture through this event. This food festival is actually the start of a series of socio-cultural activities and events. We are planning to organise more such events throughout the year to promote our food and culture,” Aula said.

The hotel will host the festival every Thursday and Friday, till January 27. The menus for the festival will vary each week.

It will consist of dishes from different parts of Indonesia.

“Being a Malaysian hotel brand, Holiday Villa has been hosting a number of food festival promoting Southeast Asian delicacies. Last November, we had a Filipino food festival and next month we’ll host a Malaysian food show. We will rotate the promotion of delicacies of different Southeast Asian nations,” said Holiday Villa Public Relations Manager Nurina Anuar.

Around 14 dishes were presented on the opening night of the Indonesian Food Festival. The cuisines included the Indonesian national dish gado-gado (fresh and raw vegetable flavoured with peanut sauce), sambal (a chilli-based sauce which is normally used as a condiment and ideally eaten with white rice) and a variety of meat preparations.