The city of Fes is preparing to be the Mecca of culinary diplomacy, for the duration of a unique event. This is the first edition of the Fes Festival of Culinary Diplomacy, scheduled from 14 to 17 April, around the theme "Culinary diplomacy and Mediterranean cultures at the service of peace". For three days, the event honours the cities of Fes, Seville, Montpellier, Berlin, Palermo, Istanbul and Beirut, through an eclectic artistic programme focused on Mediterranean gastronomy in the world of the "Book of Roger", by the Moroccan geographer Al Idrissi.
From Fes to Seville, via Montpellier, Berlin, Palermo, Constantinople-Istanbul and Beirut, the Fes Festival of Culinary Diplomacy revisits the splendours of Mediterranean gastronomy in the world of the "Book of Roger", by the Moroccan geographer Al Idrissi. Thus, from 14 to 17 April, the city of Fes will honour these six other cities through a rich and varied programme. Photographic exhibitions of Al Idrissi's maps of the cities in the spotlight (Fes, Seville, Montpellier, Berlin, Palermo, Constantinople-Istanbul and Beirut), gala evenings and round tables will be on the agenda.
Each day, two cities will be in the spotlight. Two chefs will experience the markets of the Medina. Organised in partnership with several diplomatic representations, this Festival is first and foremost "part of Morocco's desire to implement a strategy for the development and enhancement of its intangible heritage and, in this case, the way in which its gastronomic heritage has been inscribed since the 12th century – the era of the Moroccan geographer Al Idrissi – to the present day, in the Mediterranean rim," confides Faouzi Skali, initiator of this event.
Thus, for three days, around the theme "Culinary diplomacy and Mediterranean cultures at the service of peace", the public will discover the gastronomic specificities of the cities in the spotlight. "Each of the recipes, which continue to constitute the emblems of these cities even today, is also the result of the journeys of ingredients that have notably taken the Mediterranean route as it was described in the 12th century by Al Idrissi," continues Faouzi Skali. It must be said that this Festival aims to be the first project of this international scale to be born in the context of the new Fes-Meknes region in its Arab-Andalusian, Amazigh and Hebraic cultural diversity. In this sense, a meeting devoted to the official creation of the first edition of the Festival took place on 4 March at the Wilaya of the Fes-Meknes region, under the chairmanship of the Wali, Essaïd Zniber, and in the presence of the various authorities and institutions of the region, as well as representatives of different embassies.
This project was the subject of an in-depth discussion during this meeting before being officially adopted unanimously. On the programme for this first edition, there will also be cooking workshops in public hotel training establishments in the city, under the authority of great national and foreign chefs. Several conferences will take place in the afternoons throughout the Festival, one from each of the chefs in the spotlight and another from historians and other experts. And every evening, banquet dinners will be organised, paid or otherwise, in a selected Riad. There will also be the screening of several films, including "The Secret of the Grain" by Abdellatif Kechiche, "The Leopard" by Luchino Visconti, "Populaire" by Christian Vincent. A "tasting trail" will be set up in the Jnan Sbil Garden, again on the theme of the itineraries chosen by Al Idrissi.
