Festival highlights coffee, cacao

DAVAO CITY — Coffee and cacao will take the center stage as the Davao Food and Wine Festival returns next month.

Monica Floirendo Ugarte, Chair of Coffee and Cacao Experience, on Friday said one of the featured events is the Coffee and Cacao Experience, which aims to celebrate the growers, business owners, baristas, and chefs who use these two crops in their food and their businesses.

“There is a lot of creativity that goes into these two crops especially when it comes to chefs making their interpretation… Davao has a very strong coffee culture and we also have very good chocolate small business culture,” Ms. Ugarte said during Business Matters media briefing at Hukad, Ayala Malls Abreeza.

According to Ms. Ugarte, the activity, which will run from Oct. 5 to 6 at the activity center of Ayala Malls Abreeza, will showcase 28 booths and will be participated by coffee and cacao business owners in Davao City as well as chefs from Manila who are using Davao cacao in their recipes.

“We will have competitions, talks, and videos, celebrating these two crops. We will have representations from different sectors of the coffee and cacao industries and a lot of popular Davao establishments and small businesses will be joining,” she added.

The festival will be highlighted with cacao to chocolate tasting by Treena Tecson and the Davao Tableya Mixology Competition.

Ms. Ugarte said with the said activity, they are eyeing to position Davao City as the ideal place for a coffee and cacao experience.

“Because we are an important region for these two crops and aside from that we want to promote this small business,” she said.

The 2^nd Davao Food and Wine Festival, which will kick off on Oct. 4 and will end on the 27^th, is in partnership with the Department of Tourism that seeks to promote culinary tourism in Davao City.  — Maya M. Padillo