Preparations Started For Middle Eastern Festival in Worcester
- Wanjiru Waweru
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Wanjiru Waweru, Jadetimes Contributor
W. Waweru is a Jadetimes News Reporter Covering America News
Worcester, Massachusetts – Sweet and spicy, what a great way to prepare to start to bring thousands of participants for the 2025 Middle Eastern Festival. Fr. Milad Selim of St. George Orthodox explained the important role of preparation to create the beauty to represent their culture, which is something unique.
“They’ll be here for hours and prepare all of that with the phyllo dough and all the nuts and all the beauty they put inside it. It’s amazing,” said Selim.
In St. George Orthodox Cathedral, the kitchen shows a lot of admiration is what to expect to provide at the three-day special occasion.
It’s the people outside the Middle Eastern culture who really like the food. It’s a thing,” said Selim.
The arrangement of Middle Eastern cuisine, including their popular dish platter plates, however, incredible, and everybody enjoys it, of course, shawarma.
“The shawarma is amazing. We do chicken and we do beef, and the people really love that and the line is mostly for that,” said Selim.
After inviting over 10,000 participants in 2019 and increasing to 9,000 participants in 2023, organizers this year are running smoothly. Customers ordering more food to eat have become more frequent recently.
“People will actually have a menu on them instead of going to the table and looking and asking questions, saying what’s in that,” said Selim. “There’s a QR code and it will take them right to the menu where they can see the exact ingredients and they’ll tell us what they want on that sheet of paper.”
In the middle of music, dancing, raffles, and a gift shop, there would be a lot of collections that would be available in stores for both adults and children to occupy themselves.
“Live singers. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The main event is Saturday evening. There is a very well-known singer who travels from Canada to be here,” said Selim. “We have a kid zone area for just kids, and we enlarged that this year.”
The Special Occasion comes biannually, it is supported by over 400 volunteers. Selim reported that the help addressed the humanity of the Middle Eastern community.
“We have people from different cultures, different backgrounds, different nationalities in this community which is really, really beautiful to see,” said Selim. “They’re very hospitable. Very loving. You immediately walk in and feel as big as this community is.”
The festival begins from June 6 - 8. Limited parking would be available in the cathedral parking lot. Attendees could also park on Anna Street, Lake Avenue, and Buffone Arena.
