EDITOR’S NOTE
Whenever my overseas friends talk about visiting Singapore, many of them would ask me to recommend my favourite hawker stalls or Michelin-starred restaurants in the city. With the exception of Labyrinth and Candelnut, most of the Michelin-starred restaurants either serve French, European or Japanese cuisine or are helmed by expatriate chefs. The idea that Singapore food could be found and reinterpreted in a fresh and innovative way, and in a setting other than a humble hawker centre or coffee shop, is surprising to them.
Not that anymore can blame them, when even many Singaporeans are resistant to the idea. It has been almost 15 years since Mod-sin cuisine, a term first coined by Willin Low when he started Wild Rocket restaurant, was born. Since then, led by other chefs like Han Li Guang, Malcolm Lee, Tan Ken Loon, Shen Tan and Jeremy Nguee, Mod-sin cuisine has evolved from an experimental stage to become a serious homegrown culinary movement, but the perception on the ground that local food should be cheap, tasty and also stay faithful to age-old recipes still persists.
Fortunately, the movement has picked up speed as a younger generation of chefs approaches Singapore cuisine through new lens, inspired by the availability of locally grown produce and their own childhood influences to create distinctive culinary styles. The recent collaboration between the Masterchef Singapore finalists and Miller Mai, head chef of Ding Dong, to craft an elevated local menu ahead of National Day, is one shining example. It is certainly an encouraging sign of where this movement is headed even when the jury is still out on how to define Mod-sin cuisine.
Of course, local chefs do not have to be proponents of this cuisine to do our country proud. If there's one person we can applaud for rising from personal tragedy to triumph, it's Haikal Johari of one Michelin-starred Alma by Juan Amador. The executive chef, who was left paralysed after a motorbike crash in 2015, shares his fight story with us (page 38). And then, there's also the continual search for the next Singapore culinary talent. I was one of the media judges alongside a panel of chef judges from the Singapore Chefs’ Association for the recent Bocuse d’or Singapore Selection. Mathew Leong, sous chef of Restaurant À L’aise, emerged as the winner. He will eventually represent Singapore at the Asia-pacific selection in Guangzhou in 2020 and the finals in Lyon in 2021. Win or lose, there is plenty to be proud about as a nation.