International food distributors won’t take the risk of bringing specialist food products into Qatar — and that’s damaging the development of the restaurant trade in the country. That was one of the conclusions of the Doha roundtable debate.
“It’s back to basics — to healthy pure products,” said David Sosson, hospitality manager at Aspire Zone Foundation and president of Qatar Culinary Professionals. “With great products, chefs are more likely to innovate. But chefs here don’t have the same great products as elsewhere. Dry food is easier, but fresh is difficult.
“To be authentic is difficult in Qatar. How many quality suppliers are there here? Four? Dubai has four or five times more. In a supplier monopoly, they dictate — and you have to innovate with — what’s on the market.
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“When more hotels and restaurants open up and we gain the help of the municipality, it will help. But if you have one Moroccan restaurant, why would a supplier take a risk on just one?”
Grand Hyatt Doha executive chef Jean–Christophe Fieschi added: “Innovation comes with competition, and follows with the right products coming into the country.
“Qatar is like Dubai was 25 years ago. You might find a nice tomato, but not Angus beef. We need a network because local suppliers don’t have enough production and international suppliers won’t take the risk.
“Sometimes there’s more choice in the supermarkets than from [trade] suppliers.”
“For me, innovation is using an ingredient in an unexpected way,” said Natalie Wherlock, a food blogger at Lemon & Mint, adding that “great chefs will initiate the product supply” to source those ingredients, leading Abdulrahman Alharmozi, founder of where2eatqtr, to say: “We need to create more chefs in Qatar. Training here is expensive and useless.”
“Where are the home-grown [restaurant] brands?” asked Patrick Hulbert, editor of Time Out Doha. “Food trends should be starting here, and we should be less worried about what’s happening elsewhere.”
The panellists agreed that it was important to identify original Qatari dishes, and to encourage hotels and restaurants to add them to their menus.
Fieschi challenged: “To open a nice restaurant, you need 10 appetisers, 10 mains etc. But can you tell me three Qatari dishes?”
“Qatari food is pure family food. The best of it is found at home,” insisted Sosson.
“That was the case in France until we created chef schools and education — then you develop standards and rules. Middle Eastern food is still in the family. We need to translate it into restaurants.
“People who cook Qatari food aren’t ready to take a business. So how do we transfer that knowledge? It’s a cultural problem — and not easy.”
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