Colombo to sizzle with
World Spice Food Festival

The much awaited World Spice Food Festival, which is undoubtedly the biggest food festival of the year, is back again by popular demand! Organized by the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, this event has become an annual fixture that enlivens Colombo with a veritable jamboree of unique culinary experiences. Encouraged by the tremendous response and positive feedback from visitors to the fair in the past, this year too the event is organised by the Corporate Section of the Tourist Board together with the five star hotels and top restaurants in the city.

Scheduled to be held from 18-28th October 2007, the ‘World Spice Food Festival’ promises all the excitement and culinary delights that have endeared it to visitors in the past. The Sri Lanka Tourist Board will declare the event open on 18th October 2007 at the Hilton Colombo to mark 10 days of a thrilling culinary extravaganza. Each participating hotel and restaurant will conduct a food festival for one week in one of their restaurants, where world class chefs will be flown in from different countries, who are specialists in the cuisines on offer.

Spurred on by the past success of the festival, the Sri Lanka Tourist Board has envisaged the upcoming festival on an even more extravagant scale in a bid to promote Sri Lanka as a vibrant destination. Renton de Alwis, Chairman of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, is confident about the successful outcome of this year’s World Spice Food Festival and is taking a personal interest to ensure that every aspect of the event is a thundering success.

A spectacular highlight of the main event of the festival is the ‘Hawker Street’, to be held on 19th & 20th October 2007 at the Nomads Grounds, allowing visitors to the festival the ease and facility of browsing through the food stalls along with friends and family. A live band will add to the festive air with foot tapping melodies while spectacular dance items will be another highlight. An attractive kiddies’ corner will provide endless fun for children, allowing parents to browse through ‘Hawker Street’ at leisure. A surprise also awaits visit ors to ‘Hawker Street’, where every hour a lucky recipient will win a free dinner voucher from one of the participating stalls at ‘Hawker Street’ drawn on the entrance ticket. The organisers have ensured that there is no dearth of excitement at this one-of-a-kind event.

Specialty chefs flown down from various parts of the world will work their magic at this event, thus making the event a truly global one. Visitors to the ‘Hawker Street’ will find pleasure in sampling a mouth watering array of dishes made to perfection by master chefs revelling in their culinary skill. All the chefs in attendance are internationally renowned culinary experts with many awards to their credit. The participating 5-star hotels and leading restaurants will showcase 15 different cuisines from around the world at Hawker Street and are pulling out all stops to ensure that visitors to the event witness a gourmet experience like no other.

HSBC, one of the largest banking institutions in the world, has once again generously offered to support World Spice Food Festival as the main sponsor in a bid to bring Sri Lankans global cuisine at its best - right here to them in Sri Lanka. This event mirrors HSBC’s vision to be one with its local customers no matter which part of the globe they may located, as well as to bring them a taste of world class standards – be it international banking or global cuisine!
Sri Lanka’s hospitality industry has risen to the occasion as always and some city hotels are enthusiastically involved in ensuring that the master chefs will be on hand to showcase culinary delights from their part of the globe. Participating hotels, cafes, and restaurants that will don the chef’s hat at the ‘World Spice Festival’ are: Hilton Colombo; (Mexican) Taj Samudra; (Italian) Trans Asia; (Singaporean) Cinnamon Grand; (Japanese) Holiday Inn; (Jaffna Food) Ceylon Continental; (Indonesian), Mount Lavinia Hotel; (Thai) Galle Face Hotel; (Austrlalian) Galadari; (Chinese) Water’s Edge; (Malaysian) Raja Bojun (Sri Lankan); The Mango Tree (Indian); Sakura (Japanese); Han Gook Gwan (Korean); Siam House (Thai).

The national carrier SriLankan Airlines also steps in once again as the official airline to fly down the international chefs into Sri Lanka for the World Spice Festival. With such a diverse and adventurous array of global cuisine being served up by leading hotels and restaurants in the city, the World Spice Food Festival will be a culinary treat for all, offering sights and sounds from different corners of the globe, while creating a buzz about the Paradise Isle destination itself!