Hyderabad: National fish festival drawing huge crowd

The national fish festival, being held here since June 7 in association with the National Fisheries Development Board (NFDB), is witnessing some of the best cuisines of seafood being presented from the whole country.

The three days festival is attracting a large number of food lovers thronging all the stalls to try different fish cuisines.

G Rathinaraj, Executive Director, NFDB, told ANI: "This is the first year, in which we have started this kind of festival. The basic objective of this food festival is to promote domestic fish market and spread awareness about the health benefits of eating fish."

"Each of the stalls has two banners -- in Hindi and English displaying the health benefits of eating fish for the visitors. The first day we had around 5,000 visitors. Today we had around 8,000 visitors including foreigners," he said.

People from four states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala have put up 20 stalls in the three-day long national food festival.

Rajani, Assistant Director, Fisheries Board, Hyderabad, who was monitoring a fish product stall, said: "This stall is being run by those women who are involved in fish vending and are passionate about their art of cooking."

Chamanti, a food lover and student from the United Kingdom, was also one of the persons visiting the food festival.

Speaking to ANI, she said: "I have tried about four to five varieties of fish dishes in the festival, and I must say that all of them are really great.