A few weeks ago
Gibraltar held one of its most popular festivals which is called Calentitia. Calentita
is an expression of Gibraltar’s people and culture through food. The festival
is held every June in Casemates square and it gives everyone the chance to try different
foods from around the world – and it is all provided by local restaurants and
organisations.
This year we decided
to get there early and eat there. In previous years we always ate at home or
out in a local restaurant and then just nibble on a bit of food later on at the
festival. There were 23 different stalls in this year’s festival and 2 were for
drinks only. There were foods from around the world, some closer to home than
others, such as Moroccan food, and some from far away – e.g. Filipino food
(which I did not get the chance to try)
.
The 1st
stall we visited was the Dim Sum one (from China) which was quite a nice snack
to start off the night; this was closely followed by a Malaysian soup which was
very tasty but a bit too spicy. As I said earlier, there was two drinks stalls
one for wine and the other for beer. I tired the beer stall first as it was a
closer to where we were eating.
The beer on offer was
from a small brewery just 10 mins away from Gibraltar called Ketall and they
were offering 4 different kinds of beer and since we were out to try and taste
as many different things as we could beer was not going to be an exception to
the rule, so I bought all 4 of them. The red and IPA beers were the better ones
as I am not a big fan of black beer.
During the whole
festival there are usually performances happening and the highlight in past
years has been the firework display. This year this was changed and instead of
a massive fireworks, a show was performed.
The show this year
wanted to show some local talents as well as foreign which I thought was a nice
change. The music was quite interesting and apart from some backing tracks the
rest was being performed with instruments made from everyday items such as bins,
pots, pans and even the kitchen sink. The climax of this performance was a
small firework display as well a small mention to the UEFA which Gibraltar is now a proud member of.
Overall the night
turned out to be a great night out for all and the changes to the format made
it even better.
