Students were welcomed by the warm embrace of international comfort food without having to leave Westwood on Wednesday night.
A collaboration between the UCLA Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars, Wescom Financial and ASUCLA, the International Food Festival was held at the Ackerman Union Grand Ballroom on Wednesday from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. The event invited both international and domestic students to connect over their shared appreciation for food. Attendees participated in raffles and games while watching performances from Kyodo Taiko and Grupo Folklórico de UCLA.
“They (domestic students) didn’t know that UCLA had an exchange program,” said Macarena Cortes, a third-year history student from Chile who is studying abroad at UCLA this quarter. “It (the event) might be beneficial for them and us to be able to display our cultures or traditions and for them to get to know us better and the whole UCLA community.”
Although the event welcomed all students, international students were the organizers’ target audience, said Jennifer Nishikawa, a Partner Development Representative with Wescom Financial, who helped organize the event. Cortes said the night reflected a culture of gathering around food while she connected with domestic students.
Before students huddled around tables and waited in line for food, months of preparation took place behind the scenes, Nishikawa said. Overseeing the flow of the night, she said she served as an event coordinator, announcing student performances and raffle prizes.
“It was a collaborative effort to get all this up and running,” Nishikawa said. “We really just like to cultivate for students to get together, hang out and mingle. Hopefully, folks maybe met someone new tonight or got to learn something about someone else’s culture.”
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With over 400 students attending the event, ASUCLA catered tables of food from a variety of cultures and countries. Some of the featured dishes drew from Mediterranean, Japanese, Italian, Mexican and Caribbean cuisines.
Mexican and Japanese cultures were also highlighted through student performances. The student-run Japanese drumming ensemble Kyodo Taiko took the stage early in the night. Later, a performance from Grupo Folklórico de UCLA featured Mexican folk dance. Dressed in matching white ensembles, the performers danced in unison.
Avelia Mira, a programming assistant for the Dashew Center who was tabling at the festival, said she hoped the event would encourage students to explore cultures beyond their own by attending cultural performances, trying new foods and joining campus clubs.
In addition to learning about new cultures, some students participated in a raffle to win one of six prizes from the UCLA store, including new Airpods, a speaker and a UCLA store gift card.
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One of the festival’s main goals was to give international students a space to learn about other cultures and reconnect with their own, Nishikawa said. While Chilean cuisine was not specifically served, Cortes said she found that some of the event’s Mexican food included similar ingredients to those used in her home country’s cuisine. She added that she particularly enjoyed the tres leches rice and horchata.
As the night concluded, Nishikawa said she hopes attendees enjoyed the performances and cuisine and wishes to see the festival return next year.
“It really was kind of different tastings that folks could grab from around the world, and hopefully that makes people feel like they could have a little bit of a taste of home,” she said.
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