13th Sabah Hospitality Fiesta 2010 @ Citymall

One of the highlights of Sabah's tourism calendar is the Hospitality Fiesta. This is where Hotels and resorts pit their strengths against each other in different discipline. Think of it as the Olympic for hoteliers.

Apart from Hotels, aspiring Chefs and hoteliers from local institutions of higher learning (private and Public) also compete with each other.

As a matter of fact this grand event traces its humble origin from a group of hospitality students from Asia Tourism International College (formerly Asian Tourism Institute), who organised an inter-institution competition in culinary.

Today, this humble beginning has now included a charity bake sale. Whereby as you can see from the above are cupcakes forming a mosaic of giant Jalur Gemilang. This is to coincide with the theme for this year "1 Malaysia"

Close up of the cupcakes

First item on the agenda is Fruit Carving, Wedding cake display, Chocolate art, as well as Cold dish display.

Raw Ingredients, herbs spices for the cooking competition

One of the main sponsors of this event is Nestle, hence you will find Maggi as well as Nescafe signage all over the place.

In fact, cooking contestants are required to use Maggi ingredients in their cooking. All of those ingredients were sponsored by maggi, naturally

Chefs in action, the 2nd picture of cooking contestants is actually the champion for college category.

These were some of the Cold Dish display competition.

Cold dish display is categorised into Meat and Seafood category.

An interesting chocolate artwork, yes, this is acually a chocolate piece, painstakingly painted over by collors.

You'd need a lot of patiennce and artistic flair to achieve this fruit carving feat, let alone win it.

Judges on site to inspect progress

Wedding cake display

These are made from real chocolate, inedible though, as hardening agents was sprayed over to maintain firmness under harsh condition

Chocolate trees, chocolate houses, bikes, chocolate everything. Reminds you of Hansel and Gretel don't they?

Cooking competition

Contestans of competition were given a mysterious meat hidden in a "black box", hence all do not know what to cook beforehand. Contestants are then tested on their ability to come up with the appropriate recipe at the 11th hour based on the suitablity of the meat. This year, that particular mysterious meat is, simple enought, chicken. You never, know perhaps we'll have a more exotic dish in a form of Deer Meat?