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Entertainment
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13th Kumbira 2009: Best of the Regions, Best Ever
By Mike Banos
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When the
curtains rang down on the 13th Kumbira 2009 on August 14, 2009,
there was no doubt on anyone’s mind that it had earned its reputation as the
best culinary show and competition outside Metro Manila.
Colin
Mackay of Scotland,
one of the four foreign judges in this year’s competitions noted how Kumbira
was “very well organized, this year’s participants are so much better, and
their standards for live cooking and dessert specially are better than last
year’s. Every year it’s different and I see more professional entries now.”
 
L-R Chef Penk Tan, Pastry Bin, Marie Action heats up in the Kumbira Team
Garcia. banquet manager, Restaurant Challenge, Student Division
9501 and Chef Collin Mackay, chef
patron, Sala Restaurant.
Mr.
Mackay, who has been a Kumbira judge twice, is the restauratur behind fine
dining establishments in Manila like People’s Palace, Sala, (a
small classical Euro resto started in Malate which later moved to Makati) and Sala Bistro
in Greenbelt.
Marie Garcia, banquet manager of ABS-CBN’s
Restaurant 9501 shares Mr. Mackay’s views about this year’s edition. “It was
very well organized and teamwork remains even if they’re competing against one
another.”
 
Cohara Pres. Nelia Lee takes Sec. Sec. Durano at the Chali Beach booth
Ace Durano on a walking tour of with Cohara Pres. Nelia Lee and
the 13th Kumbira 2009 exhibits. Ging Chaves.
Nelia
Lee, president of the Cagayan de Oro Hotel & Restaurant Association
(Cohara) which has been organzing Kumbira for 13 years now, said this year’s
competitions and exhibits with theme “Enhancing Asian Culinary Traditions” was
the biggest ever with 58 exhibitors, 464 participants, 13 professional
participants (competing establishments), and 33 competing schools from all over
Mindanao.
Host
Cagayan de Oro and Region X had the most number of entries with four cities and
one province, closely trailed by Caraga, Socskargen, Zamboanga and the ARMM
regions. All told, six regions, 13 cities and 3 provinces sent participants to
this year’s Kumbira.
 
Mickey Makabenta briefs a participant Celeb judges Myrna Segismundo and
Dietmar Dietrich compare notes.
Micky Fenix-Makabenta, editor-in-chief of FOOD Magazine and food columnist of
the Philippine Daily Inquirer, said she’s also seen improvements over the nine
years she’s been judging for Kumbira.
“The
students especially have improved, even if they change teams almost every
year,” she noted. “That means their teachers are learning because they’re the
ones who provide continuity and pass on learnings to the next batch. I’ve seen
improvements over the years and the teachers are the difference.”
Competitions
for this year’s Kumbira included Display, Live and Service in the Student and
Professional category; and the Food Showdown “Chef Wars Kulinarya-Classical
Filipino.”
Besides the four foreign judges, seven Filipino judges of note also joined the
esteemed panel of judges.
But all has not been roses for the upgrading of the culinary skills and
creativity. “ The professionals tend to learn more slowly due to ingrained
attitudes and learnings,” Makabenta noted. “They will say yes to your critique
but you see the same errors when you come back next year.”
 
Norbert Gandler, Dietmar Dietrich and Celeb judges Gilda Sandique, Ed Tuazon
Carsten Radka during the opening rites. and Sandy Daza ponder a point during the
Kumbira Team Challenge.
Austrian
Norbet Gandler, who headed the elite panel of judges for the 13th Kumbira 2009,
is typical of the caliber of judges the Cohara brings in every year to ensure a
professional, objective and fair critique of the competing entries. He’s been
in the Philippines
for 20 years and has been a Kumbira judge nine times.
“I have observed a lot of improvement over the last nine years but there’s still room for
improvement, specially on the hot life cooking,” he noted. “In general, cooking methods, presentations, decor
showed a lot of improvements.
 
Teamwork is essential for the success of the entire team during the multi-
disciplinary Kumbira Team Challenge.
Like many
Filipino chefs, Gandler noted Kumbira chefs, especially in the professional
category tend to make short-cuts as time goes on; hence, the crying need for
more executive chefs who are “experienced, responsible, and have the right
attitude” to control quality and keep on testing new ways to make things
better.
Chef Gandler started his culinary experience in his hometown in Austria and rose to head some of the kitchens of
some of the most luxurious hotels in the world in Germany,
Sweden, China and Kuwait.
In 1989,
he started as a chef at the Mandarin Oriental Manila and later established the
International School of Culinary Arts and Hotel Management (ISCAHM) in Quezon City with his
colleague Hans Schallenberg to provide a training venue for aspiring chefs and
hoteliers for formal culinary and hotel management education at par with
European and international standards.
“Filipino
cooks are very talented,” Gandler observed. “Fast learners, very good at
imitating, very fast in learning, and they enjoy a good learning environment in
the Philippines
where international cuisine is popular because of the large number of overseas
workers. The Philippines is
not really Asian – it has a strong foreign historical influence from Spain, US, Japan."
As a
result of competitions like Kumbira and the popularity of cooking shows in
cable tevelesion, Gandler noted “a big change in perception of chefs as a
profession in last 10 years.”
In December 2007, Gandler and Schallenberg put up
Aubergine Restaurant and Pattiserie, a fine-dining restaurant serving modern
Continental cuisine with an Asian blend as a training facility for ISCAHM students.
With his
European dual system of education in the hotel kitchens to classrooms, Gandler
has helped shape the Philippine culinary heritage by mentoring some of the
country’s finest chefs, and consistently producing young hospitality
professionals so badly needed by the booming tourism industry.
The Austrian chef remarked the competitors needed to
review their cooking of hot food which needs improvement in basic areas such as
using the right cooking methods, food safety and service.
“Lots of
participants lack knowledge of basic cooking principles, fundamentals,” he
noted. “The 15 basic cooking methods, product knowledge; how to purchase
meats, seafood, vegetables are all equally important.”
As a
parting shot before the next Kumbira, Chef Gandler advises competitors not to
try anything new until they’ve mastered the fundamentals.
“You
should focus on what you know and master it,” he advises. “Not something
completely new but improvements of your existing best dishes would be best.”
”It doesn’t matter if you use simple products,” Gandler says. “Work on the
combinations, match your dishes with sidings. Don’t’ confuse. Simple and clean
is much better than doing too much.”
“Very
often, Filipino cooks try to reach too far beyond what they are capable of, a
common trait among many competitors in the Kumbira,” he observes.
”In trying to achieve something new, they tend to become too complicated so
confusion, not fusion is the result,” he noted.
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