Kita Food Festival will return to Kuala Lumpur in September 2024

On September 6, Prin Polsuk of Bangkok’s Samrub Samrub Thai, a one-Michelin starred restaurant on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2024, will be bringing the community-driven cuisine of Southern Thai fishermen to Raw Kitchen Hall.

Ben Devlin of Pipit in New South Wales, Australia, will run a Kitchen Takeover on September 5 and 6 at Yellow Fin Horse and unite Indigenous Australian bush foods with Malaysian-grown produce and proteins. 

Hans Christian of Jakarta’s August will join heads with Aidan Low of Akâr Dining to champion the increasingly popular contemporary Nusantara cuisine on September 6 and 7.

This year’s festival will introduce A Food Affair on September 7, a full-day event of fireside talks by keynote speakers and food experts, interactive culinary masterclasses, and a marketplace of food and produce from local farms and producers. Vanika Choudhary of Noon, Mumbai and Ben Devlin are expected to lead keynote talks and masterclasses. 

See also: How fermentation is bringing indigenous ingredients to the forefront of Mumbai’s fine dining scene

Keeping true to Kita Food Fest tradition, the Big Sunday Barbecue on September 8 will conclude the Kuala Lumpur weekender and showcase the talents of Pete Smit from Singapore’s Dirty Supper, home cook and internet sensation Anis Nabilah, and Dewakan. 

In Singapore, the festival will bring back its Kita Conversations series to map out plausible futures of food and ever-changing food cultures. Three seminars will take place in January and February, exploring how food is sourced in a resource-depleted world, how food is stretched to feed expanding populations, and food alternatives. 

Here is the full lineup of events for this year’s edition of Kita Food Festival:

• September 4 & 5 - Potager featuring Jimmy Ophorst of Pru, Phuket and Masashi Horiuchi.
• September 5 & 6 - Hide with Shaun Ng and Johnson Ebenezer of Farmlore, Bangalore and Yellow Fin Horse featuring Ben Devlin of Pipit, Pottsville
• September 6 - Prin Polsuk of Samrub Samrub Thai, Bangkok at Raw
• September 6 & 7 - Louis Tikaram of Stanley, Brisbane at Fifty Tales and Hans Christian of August, Jakarta and Aidan Low at Akâr Dining
• September 7 - Entier French Dining featuring Christophe Lerouy of Lerouy, Singapore and Masashi Horiuchi and A Food Affair
• September 8 - Big Sunday Barbecue 

Kita Food Fest has also brought back its young chef mentoring programme, Kita Horizons, allowing fifteen emerging talents access to parts of the culinary industry they would have otherwise not seen. In May, young chefs completed masterclasses led by mentors Jack Weldie of Chipta 11a, Lim Heng Kit of Li Restaurant and Locus, and Yahvin Siriwardhana of Nadodi.

The team of chefs were then exposed to a variety of farming methods in excursions to Chocolate Concierge, Natural Tropical Farm, and A Little Farm On The Hill. As they now prepare to fuse dairy products with Southeast Asian flavours, their educational journey will come to a close in a Thank You Dinner on September 8 in which they will craft meals from second-grade vegetables and secondary cuts of meat. 

Tickets for Kuala Lumpur-based events are available now. 

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