Sosua News On Gastronomic Festival

Thanks, I never have to visit the Sosua News site because of you Ken. You provide such a good service.

Awesome. I'll make sure to go next year.

The show on Sunday night with Ruby Perez and the proximity to Sinatras caused Robby and I to cancel a performance that evening. No matter, we will try again next Sunday.

My wife was happy to see Ruby Perez perform and he did put on a good show.

Ken - why no pictures? If you look on Sosua News pictures and indeed from my own experiences the were very few people sampling the "Gastronomi" The freebies were well attended but not the event.
Its a shame that these event are put on in the lowest of the low season when nobody is here ! Even the Dominicans who come on the buses did not participate. There were very few buses that weekend!

The organisation was great but it the wrong time ofyear.

And Ken - you palgerise Sosou News and as somebody said they dont have to look at Sosua News because you post it all on DR 1 . I have stopped posting events in Sosua because of that -Why give DR1 the benifit of what other do!
Olly and the Team

PS - You are also breaching copyright! Are you prepared for the law suites!

Poor old Ken cant post the pictures of the Gastro event - so here is the link for you to see them : Sos?a-News

Ohmmmmm look at the empty chairs and tables in the pictures and how full the freebe events were !

Olly and the Team

Why be so fast to disrespect your elders, joven, whether you agree with them or not, whether you like them or not?
The event is over. You've already posted your views.

Speaking of law suits here is one person's opinion (not mine) of the gastronomic festival:

Sosua Multicultural Gastronomic Festival 2013 again a flop for foreigners!!

The Sosua Municipality and their supporters, are again trying to blind the public that the Sosua Food festival again was a success. Well, it could be classed as a success if the only objective in sight, was to entertain, feed and attract local Dominicans and a tiny little handful of or the “hardly ever to be seen” tourist visiting Sosua!

However, if judging this events success was based on tourists and expats attending, then on a scale from 0 to 10 they get a sad “0″. You hardly saw any unfamiliar faces, and among the visitors there was maximum 40-60 different foreigners to be found (over the 3 days), and these people are mostly a tiny little percentage of the thousands of expats who live here in the Sosua / Cabarete area, WHO CHOOSE NOT TO ATTEND FOR VARIOUS REASONS!

Feedback is already surfacing from foreigners who didn’t bother attending like: ”Too Dominican!” – “Can’t stand the usual repetitive tipico music!” – “Hardly any foreign food found!” – “No-where to sit to eat your meal” – “It’s been organized for the enjoyment of the Dominicans only!” and so on…

So what needs fixing to make it profitable and truly successful?

The organizers should either rename the event from “Multicultural Food Festival” to “Dominican Annual Street Party”, or they should live up to the existing event name by fixing the following:

- Music: Reduce the percentage of Dominican music performed from 98% to 30% and start including bands or artists from other nations, i.e. locally we have great artists from Brazil, Russia, USA, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark and more… However, they are never hired or invited! Hence the reason you never hear rock, blues, jazz, or western type music.

- MC: Whoever the MC, he/she should be doing the presenting in both Spanish and English, and preferably someone who can keep it to the point while being highly entertaining. Mix a foreigner into the equation as a fellow presenter!

- Food and vendors: The organizers “by accident” got it right the 1’st year and offered a lower fee to the local restaurants to be involved, which resulted in the entire park and both sides of the street to be full of interesting international food stands. However, year two and three the organizers got greedy and more than doubled the 3 day stand rental, scaring off 95% of restaurants owners with the high entry fees. Instead less than 15 stands with food were found this year, and the “missing” vendors could have been the best promoters of the event! and instead these people chose not to promote the event or even attend themselves!

The Organizers seem to think very backwards and small scale, with the focus heavily lent on making maximum profits from very few vendors, while stroking their own ego’s on camera and video trying to make it look good. Thousands of people either stay away, and many never learnt that the event was actually happening due to the heavy lack of promotional efforts.

- Sponsors: Why is there hardly any sponsoring from expat business owners? Simple – they are never approached or encouraged to be involved! The Municipality has their own little comfort zone club, and they don’t wish to involve anyone who could challenge their limited beliefs! Only foreigners know exactly what other foreigners would like, So why not create an event committee with I.e. 60% + foreigners and 40% Dominicans for organizing this supposedly “Multicultural” event?

Only when unnecessary ego, national pride, greed and stupidity is eliminated from this event will it be a booming success!

P.S. Well done though to the artists and dancers that did perform, they did themselves proud!

To respond to the above post that dissed the festival, the jazz band before Ruby Perez did play some Spirogyra ( a Jazz fusion band from the Rochester NY area) and some other US oriented Jazz. I thought Ruby Perez did a very good job, but I think I was the only gringo in the crowd.

I to think the poster had some good points, but where are you going to get restaurants to be involved in a variety of the world's foods when they don't exist on the north coast?

Thai Food, Indian Food, Malaysian food, Traditional Mexican, German, French, Northern Italian etc, etc, etc were not there. In fairness you have to start somewhere and it WAS MUCH BETTER THAN NOTHING!!

It is true that a wider variety of music would be good, but it remains to be seen if it would increase the draw of the event.

The problem with the festival as far as the restaurants are concerend is the price. $8OOO pesos to have a booth is way beyond our budget for such an event. The first year was free. We realize there are costs involved and those costs need to be covered to a certain degree, but the organizers never mentioned any costs last year until the end of the meeting....most of us just walked out. The participation has been cut in half from the first year, so that goes to show you were we stand. The organizers ruined it because of greed, lack of business knowledge and lack of marketing skills.

windy, i thought Spyra Gyro was from Buffalo. the only major name from Rochester that comes to mind is Chuck Mangione.

I agree. Sprya Gyra is a Buffalo group. I remember when they first started performing there.