Media release for Vietnam Global Pizza Challenge 2009

This year’s Global Pizza challenge Vietnam was a perfect slice

The event was tied in with the taste of the world food festival 2009 in 23rd September park which was named after North and South Vietnam were united for 3 days 3,4 & 5th of December.

The competitors entered categories such as Vegetarian, Seafood, Meat, Speciality and Dessert Pizzas including Chocolate, Strawberry and Walnut, the use of local ingredients made for tasty delights with the addition of pineapple, bean sprouts, mint, chilli and garlic, after seeing how resourceful the Vietnamese are it was no surprise to see some truly Individual creations such as the local sausage and spring roll pizza and tempura seafood pizza.

The sponsors as well were truly global, the flour company Interflour who produce flour locally with generous lashings of flour samples for punters, PRENOX who transported their purpose built piece all the way from South Africa for the Pizzas to be made on and cooked in, FONTERRA for their shredded mozzarella which was used on the pizzas, a New Zealand based company who provides approximately 47 percent of the worlds Dairy ingredients still sees the benefits of supporting local events and defiantly pizza.

And for Charity, all the Pizzas that were judged, Each competitor made 4 and 3 were cut up and given to the audience to share the delectable masterpieces, following a donation as small or large as one wished to help grant wished for the Saigon’s Children’s Charity.

We managed to raise 1.845.000 VND!

This is enough to put one child through school for a year. It appears Pizza can do good for all. Truly Global Judges, Justin from Air Vietnam, Martin from South African Chefs Association, Glenn from the World Board of Chefs and Cassandra from the Australian Culinary Federation who collectively have over 100 years experience in judging and covered local, international and female making a fair and well rounded panel, this was not all serious, there was a lot of interaction between the Judges and the Audience with Questions and Answers to assist in raising money for Charity two of the questions were “who designed the croissants?” and “what was the original colour of the Carrot?”

To learn more you must be there next year. From the ground up, we had some fabulous Volunteers from the Saigon Chef guild and the Catering College, Norbert Ehrbar Vice Chairman of the Chef Guild did a smashing Job of organising all the competitors and logistics for the event in Vietnam The overall Standard of the Pizzas in Vietnam were quiet high, a tip for those entering next year, thin crispy base, minimal ingredients, innovative and tasty topping and minimal sauce after all the word Pizza means “

A correlation of products on a flour base” but we all know Pizza without cheese is just not the same. The winner will go and compete in the Global Pizza Final in Melbourne, Australia next year with competitors from each winning country.

Our competition is growing and we will have competitors from Dubai, Taipei, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and more So if you missed out this year, be sure not to miss next year, Pizza is food for all, unpretentious and truly Global, adaptable to any cuisine.