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Saudi Culinary Arts Commission Announces 4th Edition of Feast Food Festival

File photo of Saudi flag/Asharq Al-Awsat
File photo of Saudi flag/Asharq Al-Awsat
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Saudi Culinary Arts Commission Announces 4th Edition of Feast Food Festival

File photo of Saudi flag/Asharq Al-Awsat
File photo of Saudi flag/Asharq Al-Awsat

The Saudi Culinary Arts Commission is organizing the fourth edition of the Saudi Feast Food Festival, which will take place at Abadi Aljohar Theater in Jeddah from November 27 to December 6. This event marks a significant celebration of Saudi Arabia's rich culinary heritage.
According to a statement issued by the Culinary Arts Commission, the festival aims to showcase Saudi cuisine to local, regional, and international audiences, positioning the Kingdom as a global culinary destination. Through unique tasting experiences and authentic dining environments, the event will create sustainable opportunities for Saudi Arabia's food sector while offering visitors an innovative journey through traditional Saudi dishes, SPA reported.
The statement said that the festival will feature a diverse array of activities and events across seven main zones. The Culinary Heritage Zone will allow visitors to sample iconic ingredients and recipes from restaurants representing various regions of the Kingdom. The Competition Zone will host cooking contests featuring national and regional Saudi dishes, while a dedicated Children's Zone will provide young participants the opportunity to prepare simple dishes under specialist supervision using local ingredients.
Other highlights include the Educational Zone, which will host workshops, and a dedicated space for gift shops and cookbook sales. A key feature of this year's festival is a special zone dedicated to the Year of the Camel 2024 initiative, showcasing camels and their products while emphasizing their deep-rooted cultural significance.
The Saudi Feast Food Festival serves as a premier knowledge hub, aligning with the Saudi Culinary Arts Commission's mission to celebrate and promote Saudi cuisine as cultural heritage. In addition to highlighting local culinary arts, the festival offers Saudi chefs a platform to showcase their expertise while providing educational content to the public.
The event also brings together entrepreneurs, international and local chefs, restaurant experts, farmers, and industry enthusiasts, fostering educational, commercial, and investment opportunities. As the largest culinary event in the Middle East, the festival seeks to build an integrated community by connecting stakeholders and creating opportunities across the culinary sector.
Through the Saudi Culinary Arts Commission, the festival underscores Saudi Arabia's commitment to preserving and developing its cultural heritage. It empowers young Saudi talents to transform their culinary passions into successful ventures, contributing to a sustainable and creative economy.

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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”