UBC serves up feast of Asian food and folklore

Juicy Hainan chicken rice, fluffy egg foo yong, crisp green onion
pancakes, spicy rendang and sizzling satay. Vendors will be selling
these and other delicious creations during a series of monthly festivals
of Asian street foods and culture at the Institute of Asian Research
(IAR).

The week-long festivals, complete with cooking demonstrations and
multi-media presentations, start this month and mark the one-year
anniversary of the institute’s move to the CK Choi building.

Plans are to convert the Choi building lobby into a modern version
of “The Carpark,” a Singapore tourist attraction in the late 1960s
and early 1970s.

“It was a parking lot during the day and a food festival at night,”
IAR director Terry McGee explains. “At around 6 p.m. the food vendors
would arrive with their carts, frying pans, woks and set up kitchens
all over the place and tourists would follow their noses to a great
dinner.”

McGee studied the economics and culture of street foods in six
Asian cities in the early 1970s. He says vendors selling food in
public places at that time accounted for 50 per cent of retail sales.
While malls have since reduced vendors’ share of the market, McGee
says the culture surrounding the sale of street foods remains a
vibrant part of life in Asia.

McGee–along with graduate students Gisele Yasmeen, Donna Yeung
and Tanya Lary, whose theses deal with Asian street foods–will
give talks on Asian food hawkers and vendors in China, the Philippines
and Thailand.

As part of its community outreach program this year, the IAR will
revive the street food tradition Monday to Friday on the following
dates: Feb. 17-21, March 17-21 and April 14-18. Festivals take place
from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. with cooking demonstrations and information
about street food.

Ethnic community associations and local Asian restaurants will
cater lunches offered at $6 per meal.

The institute in located at 1855 West Mall. Enter at Gate 4 off
Northwest Marine Drive. Parking is available in the nearby Fraser
River Parkade.

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