Dénia will attend next week at the Gastronomic Forum of Macao (China), which will host a new meeting of Creative Cities of Gastronomy of UNESCO. Under the title of "The Potential of Gastronomy", the forum is celebrated from 17 to 19 in January, with debates and culinary demonstrations. The Dénia delegation will later visit the cities of Shunde and Hong Kong, where they will maintain contacts on collaborations in commercial and training matters.
The Forum has this year as a parallel outstanding activity a debate on higher education in culinary education. In one of the sessions, the Councilor for International Relations, Oscar Mengual, will speak about the introduction in Dénia of the degree of Gastronomic Sciences and the project of the International Center of Gastronomy of the Mediterranean.
The 22 representatives of the 26 creative cities that are currently part of the UNESCO Network of Gastronomy are expected to be present at the forum. The organizing city, Macao, was incorporated last November, along with seven other cities around the world that will be presented on the network in a session that will take place on Wednesday 17. The cities will take advantage to hold organizational and technical meetings, which will be attended by the director of the Office of Innovation and Creativity, Floren Terrades.
In the delegation of the Creative City of Dénia there is also the chef Alberto Ferruz, from the restaurant BonAmb de Jávea, with two Michelin stars. Ferruz has been expressly invited by the organizers to participate in a session that brings together famous chefs from around the world to tell their experiences. The chef of Xàbia will present a paper with the title "Creativity grows in the environment" and he will share a debate with two of China's most famous chefs: Chan Chek Keong, from Macao, and Li Kai, from the city of Chengdú, who participated in the Gastronomic Festival D * na of Dénia.
The Macao Forum already invited the city of Dénia in the previous edition, held in the month of November of 2016, in which the chef of Pego Evarist Miralles was present.
Visit to Shunde and Macao
Once the Macao Forum was closed, the Dénia delegation was invited to visit, on 20 and 21 days, the Chinese city of Shunde, integrated into the UNESCO network and one of the first to establish contacts with Dénia. The head of the Chinese Creative City, Fang Li, has been twice in Dénia and has visited the towns of the Marina touring its agricultural and gastronomic spaces.
The city of Shunde is currently running an international theme park project of Gastronomy, the largest in China, the ICCEC (International Cuisine Culture Exchange Center), which will reserve a permanent space for the use of the cities that are part of the network UNESCO, which may have the facilities to promote their cuisine, organize product samples, tastings or culinary demonstrations, and establish cultural and commercial exchanges.
Before leaving China, on Monday 22, Dénia's delegation will be received at the International Culinary Institute of Hong Kong, depending on what is known as the Vocational Training Council (VTC) and which is considered the most important culinary school in China and a reference for international culinary training. It is comparable to the Basque Culinary Center, with which it maintains close relations when developing programs and organizing international meetings and debates.
The visit includes interviews with the heads of the Institute to open up future collaboration with the Degree of Gastronomy of the University of Alicante and the projected Mediterranean International Gastronomy Center.
