Snapshots from the Street Food event
A beautiful event took place last night at Goethe Institute in Nicosia, bringing back memories, pictures, smells and tastes from our childhood, when 'malli tis grias' (cotton candy) and 'pagoto' (ice-cream) seen on the street, were an irresistible temptation.
The event started with three greeting notes, from the director of Goethe Institute Dr. Johannes Dahl, who welcomed us on the Institute's premises, Dr. Chrystalleni Lazarou, president of the Cyprus Food and Nutrition Museum, who thanked the people involved in this project and Dr. Evfrosyni Rizopoulou Egoumenidou, emeritus professor at University of Cyprus, who talked about the project and shared her own memories of street food in Larisa (Greece) back in the 50s. An orverview of the six-month project that examined street food in Cyprus from the 19th century to today was then presented by Petroula Hadjittofi, a PhD candidate at University of Cyprus and also currently a researcher at the Museum. Petroula talked about the kind of foodstuffs sold by street food sellers from the past to the present, the vehicles, utensils and tools they used to provide food to their street clients, the places and occasions were street food was found and also about the sellers' personalities, the ways they promoted their goodies and even how they were trying to distiguish themselves from other street sellers. After this interesting and thorough presentation, Husein Kampa, presented a panorama of images of street food from the Turkish Cypriot quarters. For the aims of this project, Paschalis Papapetrou, a well-known documentary director, prepared a short film titled "Loucas Louca, a street food seller", that was presented for the first time during the event. The event closed with the awards to the winners who participated in the photographic contest.
After the event, people had the opportunity to walk around the photographic exhibition and see archival and contemporary images of street food and also to taste some street food goodies like 'lokmades', 'shoushouko' and 'koulouria' from a small fair that was set in the yard of Goethe Institute.
