DUBAI, 22 January 2022 – The Palestine Pavilion is cooking up a storm in its virtual kitchen, where delectable local dishes are served digitally on each plate. Around an impeccably laid-out dining table in the pavilion’s Taste Palestine section, visitors are taken on a captivating culinary journey of the digital kind, where they are introduced to traditional cuisine dating back hundreds of years.
The concept of Taste Palestine marries technological innovation with the story of conventional food, with a large screen depicting how traditional cuisine is prepared and cooked in traditional pots and a stone oven, before the finished dishes are ‘beamed down’ to the centre of the table, with individual servings on each plate.
Steaming bowls of traditional Freekeh soup, prepared from an ancient grain found in the Middle East, are ‘served’ piping hot, as is Musakhan, popularly known as Palestine’s national dish – a chicken cooked in aromatic sumac and saffron spices. Mouth-watering Maqluba is flipped upside down when served, and after several lashings of sweet syrup, a perfectly-cut square portion of Nablusi kunafa appears on the virtual plate.
Raseel Amr, Media Liaison Officer at the Palestine Pavilion, said: “Serving food to visitors is part of Palestinian culture and hospitality, and the idea of the virtual kitchen is to show what a Palestinian dining table looks like. We want visitors to be part of the experience, rather than just see it on the screen, hence the idea of serving a plateful of virtual food. The food that visitors see here is a traditional meal in a Palestinian home.
“We start with a plateful of our breakfast options, consisting of fatayer, falafel, manaeesh, eggs, and cheese from the Palestinian city of Nablus. All the dishes incorporate homegrown authentic Palestinian ingredients. Our Taste Palestine concept has drawn crowds to the pavilion, and visitors have enjoyed this interactive exhibit.”
Visitors who weren’t hungry before they arrived, will certainly feel peckish afterwards, and can scan a QR code to discover 32 authentic Palestinian recipes, ready to download in English or Arabic, or indulge in the real thing at the pavilion restaurant.
