Campus Festival Features Food from Four Continents

By: Bassel Hanna

@basselawsamw

For those who attended AUC’s Carnival Celebration it couldn’t have been more of a foodie feast with savory dishes from the Americas, Asia, the MENA region and Europe just waiting for the discerning palate.

Marking the beginning of a week-long centennial celebration, the food festival on February 15 included cuisines from each continent located at a different corner of campus, filled with decorations that reflect each region and one or two vendors in representation.

“In the Asian corner there were two Buddha statues and some Asian sculptures, in the European section there was an Eiffel tower and Big Ben. In the Americas there was the Statue of Liberty,” said Shady Hamza, general manager of Student Union events. 

The MENA region corner included cuisines from Syria and from Egypt represented by the restaurants Semsom, Abo Tarek and Mama respectively. 

Abo Tarek was particularly busy as it served one of the most familiar Egyptian dishes, koshari. They had a different, flamboyant approach to preparing their dishes – juggling and tossing plates, pasta and cooking utensils as they brought the dish together.

In the Asian corner, India was represented by Karvin Masala, and Japan by One Oak. 

Prices were somewhat steep, as one dish of Chicken Butter Sauce from the Indian vendor cost EGP 75 – and  the portions were small. 

The European section was represented by Belgium and Italy. The Belgians offered French fries by Get Fried while the Italians offered Pizza by Vapiano and Sbarro. 

The Americas were mainly represented by the USA in Butcher’s Burger, Wingmen (who served chicken wings), and Primos – who again served Pizza. 

“The event is called the International Food Festival which is a part of the AUC centennial; the closing centennial carnival. It was a set theme, so that’s how we related food to the international theme, it’s a running theme throughout the whole event, not just the food festival,” said Hamza. 

The question of freshness and hygiene is a common concern when a food festival is being put together, and this year the organizers made sure they got it right.

“Initially, we felt that main challenges in bringing all these food vendors on campus were the university’s safety regulations [regarding] health and hygiene. As a result, we resorted to bringing vendors that are supposedly credible in those terms so it wasn’t really an issue. The only issue, however, was placing all these vendors in the same area with such little space allocated to us,” said Youssef Gomaa, the SU’s events entertainment chair. 

One drawback was that the Americas food corner clearly lacked Mexican cuisine, which one would have thought would be essential to properly representing the region. Members of the SU told The Caravan that they were close to getting Tacos, a local Mexican food vendor, but ran out of time. 

“There are cuisines in the four regions that we tried to include but couldn’t, because of the time constraint and the shortage of vendors that offer them here in Egypt,” Gomaa said. 

While feasting on all the delicacies on campus, festival-goers enjoyed a cultural performance  from a troupe of Ethiopian dancers (even though there were no ethnically African cuisines) as well as stilt clowns.