A major Pakistani food festival, the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia, will be opened on Monday at the Riyadh Palace Hotel to showcase a range of authentic Pakistani cuisine and to reinforce the existing bonds of friendship and brotherhood between Riyadh and Islamabad. Saudi businessman and the President of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce & Industry (RCCI) Abdulrahman Al-Jaraisy will inaugurate the five-day event.
The festival will be held from June 11 to 15. A high-profile chef from a five-star hotel of Pakistan, Muhammad Farooq, has been especially flown to the Saudi capital to prepare for the event.
"The interior design of the venue focuses on the true Pakistani culture with pottery designs, motifs taken from traditional cloth designs, Pakistani landmarks and traditional carpets," said Khulood R. Rahman, a young Pakistani engineer and interior designer, who is working on this project.
Rahman said the stalls and the dining area had been designed in a traditional format with cots and hookahs laid out in a pastoral setting near the pool side. "The focus was to create a real setting with all traditional paraphernalia and regalia for this first event," she added. The inaugural ceremony will be attended by a large number of Saudi officials, diplomats and businessmen. On the final day of the event, a raffle draw will be held for the participants.
A number of prizes like iPhones, iPads, Black Berry sets, return air tickets to/from Pakistan and Umrah trips are on offer. The envoy hoped that the event would be great success because of the popularity of Pakistani cuisine in Saudi Arabia. Ambassador Khan called on the Pakistani expatriates to make this first food festival a highly successful one by inviting their non-Pakistani friends to taste Pakistani dishes and enjoy the evening.