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Some of the Asian foods served each Friday at a park in Sulaimani, Feb. 22, 2019. (Photo: Kurdistan 24)

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Every Friday, a park in the Kurdistan Region’s city of Sulaimani turns into an Asian traditional food market, with locals and foreigners alike showing up to try various dishes offered there.

Baghi Gushti Sulaimani, Kurdish for General Park of Sulaimani, is now regularly bringing together people of Bengali, Nepalese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian, Pakistani origin, as well as those from other Asian nations. 

Many citizens of these countries live and work in the Kurdistan Region. Here, each weekend, they have created a new custom of gathering at the park to cook and sell traditional foods from their homelands.

Aside from the familiar foods from home giving enjoyment and comfort to Asian residents of the Kurdistan Region, it is also exposing locals to new and interesting foods they've never before tried.

Fawzi Ahmed, an elderly Kurdish man from Kirkuk, often comes to Sulaimani on Fridays to try the various cuisines. “They are very delicious,“ he told Kurdistan 24. “I come to Sulaimani on weekends just to try these foods.“ 

There are tens of thousands of foreign workers in the autonomous Kurdistan Region working in a variety of occupations, most of whom are from Asian nations. 

Editing by John J. Catherine