The,World,Gourmet,Festival,Ban travel,insurance The World Gourmet Festival In Bangkok

Torres del Paine is among the biggest of Chile’s national parks, occupying almost 600,000 acres (242,000 ha) of land in the south on the border with Argentina. It is also among the most important, receiving a significant proportion of domes Like any American, traveling occasionally is just what I love doing and I bet you share the same stuff with me. But traveling does not mean that you would be safe. Escaping from our job and other stressful activities is just something that w

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Seven guest chefs from as far away as the U.S., Russia and Iceland displayedtheir culinary talents for an appreciative audience that was treated to greatfood with fine wines to complement the chefs’ inventive creations.Thes festival was a bit smaller than preceding yearsas two late and unavoidable cancellations by chefs trimmed the field from theoriginal nine down to seven. But there was still plenty of talent present andenough events to satisfy the demand from guests. The festival was deemed asuccess by the hotel’s management and plans were being made throughout thefestival week for next year’s 10th anniversary celebratory event.Since journalists were given easy access to the chefsthroughout the week there was ample opportunity learn about the chefs’backgrounds and influences and what brought them to their current level ofculinary prominence. And make no mistake; this group has been awarded its shareof honors over the years from various international food organizations and toptravel and food publications, attesting to their level of skill and dedicationto their craft. This year’s chefs were Jeffrey Jake from The Carneros Inn inNapa Valley, California; Michael Ginor from Hudson Valley Foie Gras in NewYork; Maurizio Quaranta from Locanda del Pilone in Alba, Italy; Glen Ballisfrom Nedal’nij Vostok in Moscow; Siggi Hall from Siggi Hall Restaurant inReykjavik, Iceland; Celina Tio from the American Restaurant in Kansas City andMichael Laiskonis from Le Bernardin in New York City. Each of the chefs cooked dinner two nights in one of thehotel’s restaurants with the exception of Michael Laiskonis who is theExecutive Pastry Chef at Le Bernardin. He, instead, prepared pastries for threeafternoon teas. And all seven of the chefs collaborated on the seven-courseFriday night Gala Dinner which also featured live entertainment and an auctionwith a portion of the proceeds going to HRH Princess Soamsawali’s “Save AChild’s Life From AIDS Project.” Also, the contributions of some of the hotel’schefs can’t be overlooked. Without a lot of coordination and overseeing fromthe hotel’s Executive Chef, Nicholas Schneller, Shintaro Chef Satoshi Sawadaand Biscotti chef Danilo Aiassa, the event could not be staged.To give you an idea of what the dinners are actually like,here’s the menu from Siggi Hall’s Monday and Tuesday night dinners that wereheld in the hotel’s Shintaro Japanese restaurant. The starter was a variety oftraditional Icelandic treats made up of herring with horseradish sauce, curedsalmon and a langoustine tail. The next course was a piece of Arctic charr, awhitefish, with langoustine sauce served on a bed of julienned green leeks. Theseafood theme continued with the next offering which was a baked cod with analmond crust. Next was another traditional Icelandic ingredient but from the landthis time in the form of lamb fillet that was accompanied by a lamb sausage. Ablueberry pie with vanilla ice cream finished off the meal. Also included inthe 4,800++ price were five different wines and coffee.It may sound a little pricy but if you love good food andwine you would be hard pressed to find better value for money in manyrestaurants in Bangkok, not to mention Singapore or Hong Kong, especially whenyou take into account what wine prices are like in this country. Another factto consider is that most of the ingredients for the various dinners werebrought in by the chefs themselves (often in their luggage) so that they couldproduce their dishes as authentically as they do in their own restaurants athome. The other chefs presented menus that were equally ambitiousand equally representative of their culinary pedigrees. Celine Tio’s menufeatured a slow-cooked pork belly dish to emphasize her American roots-basedstyle of cooking. Australian Glen Ballis’ dinner highlighted his combinationsof top-quality international ingredients that also utilized some Russianinfluences. Jeffrey Jake ‘s offerings underscored the influence of theabundance of fresh produce that he uses in his native Napa Valley.Michael Ginor, whose Hudson Valley foie gras farm producessome of the best foie gras in the world, used that delicious ingredient in allof his dishes to great effect, creating what was probably the richest and mostexpensive (5900 baht++) menu of the festival . Michael has also been involvedwith the festival since its inception and has been instrumental in recruitingchefs for the festivals throughout the years. Maurizio Quaranta, the recipientof a Michelin star for the restaurant Locand del Pilone in his native Piedmontarea of Italy, displayed how his native Italian cooking style has beeninfluenced  by his interactions with,among others, top-quality Spanish chefs. And Michael Laiskonis’ elegant andlight desserts added just the right touch to the Gala Dinner and the high teasthat featured his award-winning work.    In the final analysis, the World Gourmet Festival is quitean achievement, especially for a hotel staff that continues to run a largefive-star hotel at the same time that it is producing 23 special food events inthe course of one week. And that doesn’t include all of the preliminaryplanning, the marketing and promotional efforts, the logistics of transportingthe guest chefs and their assistants and all of the other myriad details thatare involved. This one-of-a-kind event in Bangkok is the result of lots of hardwork and inspiration from many people and it is hoped that next year at thistime food and wine lovers here will be talking about what a great success the2009 version of the festival was. The city certainly needs all of the firstclass events it can get to help promote itself as a serious dining destinationin Asia and the World Gourmet Festival is leading the way.