SFF Village. Image courtesy of SFF.Text by Sheere Ng @ Makansutra
Singaporeans eat more than 100,000 tonnes of seafood each year and this number will most likely shoot up when the Singapore Food Festival (SFF) kicks off on the 13th of July.
Lasting for ten days, the theme of this year’s SFF is seafood, chosen to “celebrate Singapore’s fishing village heritage” and the festival will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for Most Curry Fish Heads served in a single dinner setting by serving 2012 fish heads.
The theme of this year’s SFF is similar to previous years’ festivals with a food village housing local and international seafood dishes; a tiffin cruise along the Singapore River; culinary workshops by well-known chefs.
One of the highlights this year is a $150+ per person tour around the Jurong Fishery Port which ends off with a seafood breakfast cooked by a chef.
The SFF also has an official seafood platter comprising of chilli crab/butter crab, stir-fried live geoduck, prawns tossed with salted egg yolk, deep-fried coral trout in Nonya style and seafood fried rice. The platter, which is created by Seafood Paradise, is priced at $36.90+ and will only be sold at the food village.
Here are details of some of the programmes:
SFF Village
Date: 13-22 July
Venue: Waterfront Promenade at Marina Bay
50 stalls under one roof selling local and international delicacies.
Seafood Treasures, Tales and Trails
Date: 14-29 July
Venue: Kampong Glam
Features traditional (Ikan Bakar) and modern (Japanese raw octopus) dishes; a seafood food treasure hunt to discover the precinct’s heritage; and cooking classes to be conducted by chefs.
Seafood Mela
Date: 13-14 July
Venue: Little India
The precinct will attempt to break Guinness World Record by serving 2012 Curry Fish Heads in a single dinner setting on the 14th. There will also be a “Best Indian Seafood chef” competition to kick off the festival on the 13th.
Tiffin Cruise. Image courtesy of SFF.Tiffin Cruise
Date: On demand
Venue: Singapore River, embarkation at Marina Bay Jetty
Fee: $68+
Tuck into a seafood set meal, served in a traditional tiffin carrier, as you cruise along the Singapore River.
Jurong Fishery Port. Image courtesy of SFF.
Behind the scenes @ Jurong Fishery Port
Date: On demand
Time: 5am – 9am
Venue: Jurong Fishery Port
Fee: $150+
A chef takes participants on a tour through the fishery port to learn how to pick the freshest catch, followed by a freshly prepared seafood breakfast in a restaurant
Cooking Workshop By Violet Oon
Date: 16 July
Time: 11am-2pm or 5pm-8pm
Venue: Violet Oon’s Kitchen, 881 Bukit Timah Road
The celebrity chef will teach you how to whip up dishes like Salted Egg Roe Crabs Spectacular and Fish Curry a la Little India.
For more details, visit www.singaporefoodfestival.com.sg or call 6796 9331
What is your ideal Singapore Food Festival?
Some of you may have noticed that the SFF has been featuring the same programme format for the last four years.
When we asked the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) – who has been running the festival all these years – whether we can expect fresh ideas from future SFFs, the state board’s Director of Precinct Development, Mr Andrew Phua brought up an important point:
“We are definitely open to ideas, but the festival must be industry-driven. It has to be what the industry feels could be a value-add to them, in terms of their business and their precinct prepositions.”
An indication as to how important the tourism dollar is to the Singapore’s food industry is that in 2011, visitors to Singapore spent S$2.24 billion on food and beverage. Around 37.5 per cent of SFF attendees were tourists in 2011, up from 28 per cent the year before.
What would you, the reader, hope to see in a future SFF? Should it be industry-driven like what Mr Phua says? What else could it be? Comment below, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
