From numerous enlightening discussions and packed food stalls serving both street and restaurant foods, to a hilarious pig pageant and entertaining live events featuring local music sensations, this year’s Ubud Food Festival has hit all the right notes.

The closing night on Sunday saw local blues band Unbroken play to an attentive crowd that begged for encore after encore, before turning into a horde of party animals when Denpasar-based banker DJ Marlowe spun his eclectic digital repertoire.

The jovial atmosphere reflected the general ambience of the three-day festivities, the brainchild of Ubud restaurateur Janet De Neefe of Ubud Writers and Readers Festival fame.

“I love the laidback ambience of this festival. People come to enjoy themselves and have some together time with their friends and loved ones while enjoying good food,” one visitor said.

People did indeed love the food. It was nearly impossible during the festival to find individuals sitting or walking without food in their hands, be it a best-selling burger from Locavore or the addictive beras kencur gelato of Gelato Secrets.

During lunch, and even more so at dinnertime, getting a table in the festival’s two main food venues — Pasar Kuliner and Pasar Senggol — was a difficult task due to the sheer number of diners.

Pasar Kuliner, which was hosted inside a huge open-air pavilion, housed stalls from noted establishments such as Padma Resort Ubud, Bali Buda, Uma Cucina, Queens of India and Alchemy Restaurant. Pasar Senggol, on the other hand, offered various street foods, including the famed nasi janggo and bakso meatballs, as well as Balinese lau palm toddy provided by small-scale local entrepreneurs, including the housewives association of an Ubud hamlet.

“The thing I love the most about this festival is how it has managed to bring the locals, the expatriates and the tourists together. Here, a festival usually attracts a predominantly local or bule [foreigner] audience. At Ubud Food Festival, I saw a healthy mix of locals and bule,” another visitor said.

The festival also saw Indonesian chefs, such as Farah Quinn, arguably the festival’s most photographed and wefie-ed personality, and Bara Pattiradjawane share the limelight with their international counterparts, while Indonesian culinary legend Sisca Soewitomo, who pioneered television cooking shows before the dawn of the age of celebrity chefs and penned dozens of cooking books, was honored for her lifetime dedication to gastronomy.

“We will surely be back next year with an even better festival,” De Neefe said.

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