2013 Lucky Rice Festival - New York

Lucky Rice Festival 2013 April 29th - May 5th 

If you love Asian cuisine the way I love it, or if you like it, or if you don't know much about it but want to learn more, then you're going to enjoy the fourth annual LuckyRice Festival, which will be in New York City from April 29-May 5 before heading out on a tour that will bring it to the ramen and kimchi-starved masses in Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

What I'm trying to say is, I like food. You could even say I love it. And anyone who knows me knows I love Asian food most of all. If there is a more perfect food in the world than fresh sushi/sashimi, I don't know what it is, although a well-made dumpling comes close. And udon. And halo-halo. And... well, I really love Asian food. 

Now, you might think that bringing a festival devoted to Asian food and drink (yes, cocktails are involved as well) to a city as passionate for Asian cuisine as New York would be a no-brainer, like bringing a sausage-and-beer festival to Milwaukee or a poutine festival to Montreal. But a whole lot of how New Yorkers pride themselves on knowing which nooks and crannies of Chinatown or Alphabet City or Flushing have the cheapest, most obscure culinary delights.

That makes my job more interesting because then we can introduce distinct regional flavors from Asia into the festival, instead of lumping Asian food into what was formerly the trilogy of Japanese, Chinese and Thai. An oft-overlooked Asian cuisine, Filipino food is getting its chance to shine at a dinner hosted by Leah Cohen of Top Chef fame. For chef and television host Andrew Zimmern, "this may be in our future much closer than you think". He calls Filipino Food as the "Next Big Thing" in the culinary world.