The eco-friendly Asian cuisine centre Bang Bang Oriental will celebrate Dragon Boat Festival with a rice dumpling eating competition on June 18.
Following the success of previous speed eating competitions at the venue in Colindale — London’s largest Asian food hall — the rice dumpling eating contest will challenge every contestant to eat two Royal China dim sum rice dumplings, each weighing 500g.
The Daunwu Festival, also known in the West as Dragon Boat Festival, is a national holiday in China occurring near the summer solstice and is celebrated this year on June 18.
Bang Bang Oriental marketing manager Ying-Chu Chen said: “Combined with our rice dumpling eating competition we want to introduce our audience to our custom, one of very important dragon boats.
“There is going to be a real dragon boat coming to our food hall – very long, very heavy, weighting about 300kg.
“It’ll probably need about 16 strong men to lift it up into the food hall,” she added.
The boat will be approximately 12.5m long and has been donated to the venue by Race The Dragon.
The history of Dragon Boat Racing goes back to ancient China, and was traditionally held to avert misfortune and encourage the rain needed for prosperity.
During the festivities many eat zongzi, a traditional dish known as rice dumplings outside of China.
Ms Chen said that speed eating competitions are very popular between the customers and that the venue rewards winners with restaurant vouchers of significant value.
“Every different competition is a different cuisine — if you keep on doing the same it’s kind of boring,” Ms Chen said.
Opened in 2017 in Colindale, Bang Bang Oriental is London’s biggest Asian food hall and offers 27 individual food kiosks and room for 450 diners.
The venue encompasses a food court, restaurant, community space and a bar for refreshments and alcoholic beverages.
With its exceptionally wide offer, the food hall brings under one roof Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Vietnam, Taiwanese, Malaysian Thai, Hong Kong and Filipino cuisine.
The competition will be held on Monday June 18 at 7PM and it will be streamed live on Bang Bang Oriental Facebook page.
To participate in the contest e-mail [email protected] with the subject ‘rice dumpling speed eating challenge’ before June 11.
