A nation marching on its stomach

IN terms of gastronomic tourism, Spain leads the world ... but others want a piece of the pie.

AUSTRALIA-OFFBEAT-FESTIVAL-BREAKFAST-BRIDGE

ON Sunday, October 10 last year the Sydney Harbour Bridge was transformed into a giant "park" – complete with 11,000sq m of grass, flower beds, benches and swing sets – on which 7000 people gathered for a picnic.

The event, part of the Crave Sydney International Food Festival, was a public relations goldmine for the city; broadcast on television screens around the world and providing reams of local and international newspaper copy.

“More than 100 million Chinese watched pictures of Breakfast on the Bridge on the news that night,” says Geoff Parmenter, CEO of Events NSW, which has thrown its weight behind the food festival in a bid to increase visitor numbers and brand Sydney as Australia’s food and lifestyle capital. “A photo of the inaugural event occupied the front page of an Arab language newspaper that circulates through the entire UAE. You can’t buy [that sort of publicity].”

When the 19th Melbourne Food & Wine Festival kicks off next month the impact on Victoria will also be substantial. In 2010, the state’s premier food and wine event injected $34.8 million into the local economy, generated $28 million worth of publicity and saw more than 400,000 festival-goers (a 100 per cent increase on 2008) flock to the 250 events in the city and surrounds. “As well as the significant contribution to tourism numbers and the economic impact, the world-class nature of the festival program … sees many of these visitors leaving our shores as international ambassadors for the festival, Melbourne and Australia,” says Natalie O’Brien, CEO of Melbourne Food and Wine.

This year’s event, which kicks off on March 4, will see international chefs including England’s Nigella Lawson and Angela Hartnett, as well as Spain’s Elena Arzak, included in a Women in the Kitchen lineup conducting Masterclasses sessions at The Langham Melbourne, as well as dinners with host restaurants. At Crown, just down the Southbank strip, international stars such as Atul Kochhar and Chris Salans will feature in a series of Stars of Spice dinners at the complex’s restaurants.

Previous festival alumni include Heston Blumenthal, Rene Redzepi, Thomas Keller, Fergus Henderson, Michel Roux and bad-boy American David Chang, who was a star at last year’s Melbourne event. And the benefits of luring such high-profile talent are not just measured in PR opportunities and increased bookings at restaurants. After his Melbourne appearances last year, Chang holidayed in Sydney and later announced he will open the first non-American outpost of his Momofuku empire in Sydney’s new Star City restaurant precinct.

Then there are the knock-on effects for Australian chefs. “Adrian Richardson had a couple of his chefs do stages at Momofuku in New York this year; a chef from Vue De Monde is in Brazil and will be doing a stage at Alex Atala’s restaurant DOM, while two students from Holmesglen TAFE who helped Andoni Luis Aduriz will travel to Spain next year to spend a few months working in the kitchens at Mugaritz,” says Melbourne Food & Wine Festival PR manager Sally Brown.

Word-of-mouth benefits for local restaurants cannot be underestimated, either. “All these top chefs are going home, saying: ‘Oh my god, Sydney was amazing’,” says Sydney International Food Festival director Joanna Savill, who believes it is no coincidence that Sydney, and Australian restaurants generally, have been climbing up the world’s 50 Best Restaurants lists. 

Spain’s annual Madrid Fusion summit has made the nation a leader in the international food community, with Madrid a magnet for a who’s who of the culinary world each January and Spanish restaurants and chefs – Ferran Adria, Martin Berastegui, Juan Mari Arzak and Paco Roncero among them – becoming culinary rockstars in the process. Enrique Ruiz de Lera, head of marketing and communication at Spain’s Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, says the benefits of supporting such events are long term, particularly in regard to boosting a destination’s image. So successful has Spain’s promotion of itself through gastronomic tourism been that, at the time of going to press, Ruiz de Lera was in Korea speaking at an international seminar on how to brand Korean cuisine abroad. When it comes to tourism, it clearly pays to put one’s money where one’s mouth is.