The first ever Black Food Festival was held in Nairobi, Kenya on Sunday to great funfair.
![Graça Machel was born in 1945 [CGTN]](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg'%20width%3D'100'%20height%3D'100'%20data-ring-placeholder%3D'1'%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E "Graça Machel was born in 1945 [CGTN]")
The place to be was J’s Fresh Bar & Kitchen along Muthangari Drive where all the action was going down.
The Black Food Festival is a celebration to celebrate and highlight unique food away from commonly accepted food colours.
The brainchild behind the concept is Regina Boros, a Hungarian food enthusiast, blogger, and marketing professional from Budapest who founded the Black Food Festival initiative in 2016.
She partnered with Kenya’s largest food lovers online community - Let’s Cook Kenyan Meals Community - and Mombasa Farmers and Artisans Market to bring the event to Africa for the first time.
“The whole project is about being open minded and trying out new dishes out of the ordinary. We celebrate and highlight unique food and provide a platform for people to explore their gastronomy,” Regina told BISSA.
At exactly 11am, J’s Fresh Bar & Kitchen doors were flung open ready to welcome Nairobians of all walks of life.
And Kenyans did not disappoint, they come out in large numbers all donning their favourite black gear ready to give their taste buds and gastronomy a food treat like no other.
Vendors displaying various kinds of black inspired products were meticulously arranged across J’s Fresh Bar expansive floor space.
All one needed to do was stroll from one vendor to another feasting your eyes and mouth to your fill.
Some vendors experimented with natural dark color and ended up creating amazing products. Purple, brown and dark blue meals were also welcome and on display.
From Kenya’s traditional fermented porridge, wild berries, baobab jam, to licorice from Finland all were on display and offering free samples to the public.
There was also a wide array of handcrafted artisanal products such as african inspired jewelry, accessories and art pieces to go around.
“I am very happy with the turnout, we have a wide variety of vendors all displaying various products,I have to say it's even more diverse than our last black food festival which we held in London, it has been a great success,“ said Regina.
Black food is not only visually appealing to the eye but also good for the stomach. Some of the finest coffee, decadent dark chocolate, luscious black berries, to traditional balsamic vinegar that has been made for centuries using traditional methods are some of the healthiest foods around.
At the end of it all vendors who had wowed the judges with their creative foods, setup and originality were awarded with gift hampers.
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