Select ‘Street Food’ to find flavors around the world

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February 20, 2013

Select ‘Street Food’ to find flavors around the world

Christine Tibbetts CNHI The Tifton Gazette Wed Feb 20, 2013, 04:01 PM EST

Not sure how I’ll get myself to Singapore this year, or Abu Dhabi even though I’m interested.

Might even be a challenge to find my way to Brazil, but I have figured out how to taste foods the locals like there.

Street food is my quest in 2013, maybe from food trucks or sidewalk vendors in alluring places around the world.

Or more realistically perhaps, lunch and dinner inspired by flavors people prefer in places I dream of visiting.

Here’s how:

Chefs from 56 countries created recipes they believe represent unique global flavors. They submitted 160 dishes to a partnership of two significant hotel groups as possible selections in their restaurants.

Six made the cut and that’s what you and I can eat today. Ask for the “Simply Street Food” menu in 30 of the Omni Hotels & Resorts.

Closest to home are in Atlanta, Jacksonville, Orlando and Charlotte.

Global Hotel Alliance partnered in the competition to create dishes celebrating authentic street food by chefs from their home region; three chefs from each hotel group won top kitchen honors.

Find the across-the-world winning chefs in Singapore at the Pan Pacific Orchard,

in Bahia, Brazil at the Tivoli Ecoresort and in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, at the Emirates Palace

Set your 2013 travel plans in the USA and find those three winning chefs in the street food competition in Boston at the Omni Parker House, in San Antonio at the Omni La Mansion del Rio and in Pennsylvania at the Omni Bedford Springs.

Don’t fear exotic. One of the winners is a short rib sandwich with Vermont cheddar cheese. Chef Gerard Tice in Boston says, “This is all local: New England family farms where we can support local food artisans.”

He’s born and bred in Boston and loves the food truck craze and now also the street foods he’s serving in Omni Parker House Hotel.

“Street food touches on all the different origins and that’s good,” Tice says.

Do expect exotic. Chef Moh’d Alaa Allaham in Abu Dhabi created the contest-winning chicken sandwich. Musakhan is the name of origin and how it’s known today throughout the Middle East.

Butchering was the family business as chef grew up in Damascus, Syria so he says he’s quite at home chopping chicken for this acclaimed street food today.

Originally farmers prepared the musakhan to celebrate their produce, he says; now multitudes order it.

Naan, or another flatbread, onions, pickled cucumber, garlic mayonnaise, a slice of tomato will be among the ingredients.

Today, Allaham is found in the Oriental Kitchen, butchery and room service at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. That’s the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and means father of the gazelle.

I spent a few hours in the Qatar airport in Doha, some 350 miles away, but can’t report yet on this hotel on the Arabian Gulf.

Looks like a lovely drive, bordering the Gulf all the way between these cities.

Anticipate familiar foods in new ways as with the braised lamb tostado created by Chef Scott Mole inspired, he says, by growing up with a cooking family in Chicago.

Citrus ancho, avocado, cilantro are among his staples for the tostado, after the lamb is braised at least four hours.

His favorite ingredients in general? Fresh, wild sustainable produce, meats and fish, as well as curries, dried chilis, citrus, fresh herbs, wild foraged mushrooms, vinegars, stocks made from scratch and heirloom tomatoes.

Favorite TV show as a kid, he says, was Julia Child.

Outdoor parties and street carnivals influence Chef Josemar Passos in Brazil, creating cuisine in the land where he has always lived.

Root vegetables he favors for their flavor, color and texture and indigenous ingredients too, he says, representing his Afro-Brazilian heritage.

“I grew up cooking in my grandparents’ kitchens.”

His prize winning street food is Acaraje de Orixa, and when you order that you’ll get a fritter based on a black-eyed pea mixture filled with smoked shrimp.

A staple in Brazil is what I’m told. Chef Passos giggles when he says these fritters are filled with “delicacies.”

Through a translator, he also says they’re known as “Bahai’s hamburgers,” sold everywhere on the streets of the Brazilian city where he manages five kitchens at the Tivoli Ecoresort.

Street Food’s duck empanada is the direct result of a holiday in Ultrabanda in the Dominican Republic, says Chef Gene Moss.

Apparently he bought them every morning from street vendors. Now he uses empanadas as vessels for his French cooking and Vietnamese flavored food.

“This definitely marries my passion for traveling to my passion for food,” Chef Moss says.

I too like that kind of marriage!

He’s the sous chef now in San Antonio at the Omni La Mansion del Rio. It’s on the River Walk, and you can walk to the Alamo too.

If you’ve stayed at the five star, five diamond Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, you might have tasted his cooking already.

As a Malaysian-born chef who is now a permanent resident of Singapore, Chef Andy Oh created Famous Peddler’s Char for Simply Street Food.

He says that’s a traditional dish updated to match the sophistication of Singapore. Need a translation? Stir-fried flat rice noodle.

Prawns, Chinese sausage, crabmeat, bean sprouts and chives are included and the Kway Teow sauce includes light and dark soy, fish gravy and oyster sauce too.

Chef Oh says this is such a Singapore favorite that it can be ordered for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Find him at Pan Pacific Orchard, knowing Orchard Road is the entertainment and shopping district in Singapore.

Consider another Chef Oh culinary concept developed at Pan Pacific Orchard: “Plates of Pleasure,” a seasonal semi-buffet menu with unlimited servings of signature dishes, prepared in plated tasting portions and served hot “a la minute” from the show kitchen.

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