Tianjin to give fans a big serving of fun

China Daily

Left: Students pick through handfuls of coriander. Right: A cold dessert awaits food fanatics with a sweet tooth.

Food Network fanatics, Master Chef addicts and other self-confessed gastronomers, who believe the food scene in Beijing is still a little underdone, will be excited to know that the city's food culture will be getting a significant boost this weekend with the inaugural China Wine & Food Festival in Tianjin.

Brought to China by the organizers of the extraordinarily successful South Beach Wine & Food Festival in Miami, the Tianjin event is aiming to become a similar annual culinary institution.

While many of Beijing's major hotels have held food and wine events over the years, the capital has, until now, had relatively few large-scale outdoor events that truly celebrate the delights of eating and drinking.

In the China Wine & Food Festival, there will be 18 contributing restaurants and food providers and 47 wine and spirit brands.

On the main stage, celebrity chefs, including Da Dong of the famed Da Dong Roast Duck restaurants and Max Levy of Bei will flaunt their culinary skills and demonstrate their favorite dishes.

The Westin Tianjin's mixologist will be demonstrating the hotel's signature mojito, while Raffles Tianjin, which creates a new "sling" for every city, will be shaking up its Tianjin Sling.

Those after deeper learning can attend the many food and wine seminars throughout the festival and others merely hoping to satisfy their taste buds can graze at the food and wine stalls offering up their produce.

The festival, however, is about more than just copious consumption. It's also about giving the hospitality management students from the Tianjin campus of the Florida International University (FIU) the opportunity to get some real-world hospitality experience.

Back in 1997, the Miami festival started in much the same way. It was organized as a non-profit afternoon function to give students of the Hospitality & Tourism Management School the chance to get their hands dirty.

Over the years it has transformed into a four-day festival on the beach, which this year attracted more than 53,000 guests.

"It's an opportunity for students to experience firsthand an event, to meet famous chefs and work with them and, of course, to raise scholarship dollars," said festival director Susan Gladstone.

The Miami festival has become a platform for students' careers. One poster child of the event is Andrew Kaplin, who began in the Miami festival as a student volunteer doing basic duties. He worked his way up to being a paid manager of the celebrity stage section, where he caught the attention of Food Network star Rachael Ray. A quick look at his LinkedIn page shows how his career has since taken off.

"He's now more connected than I am," laughed Susan.

Tianjin might seem a little out of the way for Beijingers but there are good reasons for the location.

"We're there because the Tianjin University of Commerce realized there was a huge need for Western-trained hospitality students," explained Susan.

"Our school has been there now for six years. The idea of it was that the hotel industry in China as a whole was exploding with Western hotels and they needed English-speaking, Western-trained students."

Tianjin also offers the sightseer interesting ambles through its myriad of former concessions, which were given to countries such as Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan and France by the Qing court from around 1860.

The China Wine & Food Festival will be taking advantage of the former Italian concession, setting itself up in the "Italian Style Town".

And while at first thought Tianjin might seem a little far, it is just a 30-minute bullet-train ride away and the organizers clearly have their minds set on enticing Beijing food lovers over for a seaside day trip.

So, for those who have had the notion to visit Tianjin simmering on the backburner, this might be the perfect excuse to really get it cooking.