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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