Center for Food and Nutrition Studies of Faculty of Agricultural Technology UGM along with Kreatifood Indonesia held a unique and delightful culinary event titled Jogja Pedas Festival (Festival of Spicy Jogja). Held for three days from May 10-12, 2018 at Hartono Mall, the festival presented a variety of cuisines that are currently popular in the community, particularly spicy cuisines.
Jogja Pedas Festival aimed to ignite the love of Indonesian people for traditional Indonesian cuisines. It also aimed to educate the society on spicy cuisines, culinary business opportunities, the creation of dishes with international serving and taste, as well as the creation of a new variant of spicy cuisine from traditional cooking materials fused with the look and taste of international cuisine. This year, the festival carries the theme of “Trending Culinary Creation: Hot, Tasty, Crispy, and Spicy”.
Some of the cuisines that are presented in this festival include Ayam Penyet Surabaya, Sate Taichan Cumi, Kedai Hijau Semarang, and others. To animate the event, there was a cooking show with NET TV’s popular host, Chef Chandra Yudaswara, along with some other chefs from Indonesian Chef Association Jakarta and Yogyakarta. There was also a talk show presented by some Culinary Practitioners and Academicians, delivering interesting and useful themes for the guests of Jogja Pedas Festival.
The organization of this event was inspired by the trending of spicy cuisines initiated by street food stalls and restaurants that provide a variety of chili sauce menu favored by all kinds of people. Public enthusiasm towards this type of cuisines encourages the success of the culinary business with a distinctive spicy taste of Indonesia, which also become popular among people from other Southeast Asia countries, such as Malaysia.
Today, some of the local restaurants have entered the international market by expanding their business to Malaysia, Singapore, and the Middle East and receiving great responses from the supporters.
Looking at this phenomenon, in addition to the culinary festival, Center for Food and Nutrition Studies collaborated with several sponsors to organize a supporting event, a seminar titled “Discover the Uniqueness of Spicy Cuisines”. The seminar talked about the culinary world through the perspective of history, quality, and business.