Saudi Gazette report

ALABAMA, US — Saudi student Hudhayfah Al-Hamawi has bagged first prize in an international culinary competition organized by the University of North Alabama in the United States.

As a result of Al-Hamawi’s endeavors, the university department added Saudi Kabsa and Moussaka dishes to the curricula of the university. Al-Hamawi said that he succeeded in convincing the department to add Saudi cuisine to the international cuisine subject, represented by Saudi Kabsa and Saudi Moussaka salad, as part of his effort to introduce the Saudi food culture in the United States.

Al-Hamawi is pursuing higher studies under the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Foreign Scholarship Program in the Department of Culinary Arts Management at the University of North Alabama. He emerged winner of the first prize in the three-month long culinary competition, in which 12 students from different nationalities around the world participated.

Al-Hamawi is considered as one of the outstanding students in the modern specialization of culinary arts that the Ministry of Education has included in the new specializations in line with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. He lauded the efforts of the Saudi cultural attaché at the Saudi embassy in Washington, which enabled him to join this specialization, even though he had graduated from the Technical College in the Makkah region in the field of tourism and hospitality.

Al-Hamawi had vast experiences in culinary specialization, mostly in hotels near the Grand Mosque in Makkah, before leaving for the US for higher studies under the foreign scholarship program.

He also had undergone training in a program at King Abdullah Economic City, supported by Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, emir of Makkah and advisor to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in which he emerged among the top 10.