Gourmet Festival 2017 – The celebration of heavenly flavours

One of the biggest and most popular gastro festivals, Gourmet Festival was held at Millenáris last weekend. It was a real orgy of different flavours, spices and aromas that attracted a lot of visitors.

The festival that belongs to the Sziget Festival group is held every year at Millenáris over a weekend. This year the organisers came up with a novelty: the festival crossed borders, meaning that visitors could also try the specialties of transborder restaurants.

According to 24.hu, the event might seem overpriced and a bit snobbish, but why bother if the food is simply phenomenal. It’s true that some people might only go to show off their new designer jeans or prove that they are into fine dining as this is also the place, where you’re guaranteed to bump into celebrities at almost every corner. But there must be a good reason why people pay 3,900 forints to then eat for even more. It is definitely the quality and diversity of food that dazzle people.

You could try the menus of Budapest’s Michelin starred restaurants for affordable prices and taste the flavours of countryside restaurants, where you wouldn’t go otherwise. As you might now, the gastronomy of Budapest has been flourishing in recent years, we now have four Michelin starred restaurants and more and more people who don’t mind paying a bit more for quality food.

Photo: www.facebook.com/GourmetFesztivál

The Gourmet Festival is an ideal meeting point for professionals and the audience, and even though the prices might seem high, Ákos Sárközi, the chef of Borkonyha said that they don’t come for the money, they come to meet people and get feedback.

Also, the audience truly wants to meet them, which is demonstrated by the long queues at most stands. At some places you even had to wait for almost a day to try the most popular dishes. Furthermore, the lines are not only long at the stands of Budapest restaurants, people were just as curious to try the meals of countryside restaurants, bistros.

The themes of this year’s festival were mangalica (curly-haired hog) and strawberry. The restaurants weren’t obliged to use these ingredients in all meals, but most of them took the task seriously and tried to incorporate these ingredients in creative ways. The ideas turned out perfectly and you didn’t feel like the solutions were enforced.

The organisers also invited star chefs from abroad to the festival this year. The guests included Wojciech Amaro, who won Poland’s first Michelin star, the Slovenian Ana Ros, who was chosen as the world’s best female chef this year, the team of Fouzoo, which is kept count of as Slovakia’s best restaurant and the team of Taubenkobel, one of the best Austrian restaurants.

Anna Olson – Photo: www.facebook.com/GourmetFesztivál

Just to bring water to your mouth, here’s a list of some of the delicacies that were quite popular at the event:

• mangalica sausage with scallops cooked in vanilla butter, pickles with green strawberries and bread with a touch of coffee flavour (Bori mami from Gyöngyös)
• “May” vegan salad with strawberries and cherries caramelised in xylitol, turnip cabbage, asparagus, walnut, walnut oil, passionfruit sauce and poppy seeds (Erhard from Sopron)
• focaccia with mangalica ham, buratta from Puglia, Italian tomatoes and roasted almonds from Sicily (Anyukám mondta from Encs)
• “Julietta” pizza with roasted tomatoes, parmesan cheese, mozzarella and fresh basil (Jamie’s Pizzeria from Budapest)
• sturgeon with elderberry buttermilk, sour pine buds and strawberries (Kistücsök from Balatonszemes)
• dumplings made from truffle dough, served with light egg mousse (Babel Budapest)
• mangalica with gamy sauce, beetroot, carrots and tarragon (Kiosk Budapest)

Photo gallery: www.facebook.com/GourmetFesztivál

If you’re not hungry yet, you can read the whole list of meals on this link.

Index.hu thinks that what makes Gourmet Festival so amazing and probably the best gastro festival in Budapest is that everybody – even people who aren’t interested in fine dining, goat milk and truffle – can have a great time while getting to know the current gastro trends in the country.

Featured image: www.facebook.com/GourmetFesztivál

Ce: bm

Source: http://24.hu/