SINGAPORE — Since its advent in 1994, The Singapore Food Festival’s (SFF) main objective for the most part is to showcase Singapore’s multi-ethnic food scene and unique culinary heritage. This year, the SFF seems to be a renewed fervour for our evolving, even progressive, local dining landscape, but still keeping a keen eye on preserving the country’s uniquely indigenous flavours.

This, of course, involves some creative takes on conventional recipes. So it’s no surprise that a few household names in this department have made the line-up.

“I am not sure how far it will go in preserving or progressing the Singapore cuisine culture, these are very tall hats to wear in the bigger scheme of things,” said Wild Rocket’s Willin Low, whose pioneering jazzy renditions of “mod-Sin” (for modern Singapore) cuisine has already done more than just promote popular homespun predilections.

Low is hopeful that the interest they create will also generate discussion and debate about authenticity and preservation, or simply interests in the original dishes. “At Wild Rocket, the reinterpretations of local dishes have always been from the perspective of celebrating local cuisine rather than seeking to replace the original dishes,” he added.

“I recall a British expatriate who had been living in Singapore for several years; she had our Chilean Seabass With Chai Poh Confit. After eating it she said, ‘Oh, so that is what chai poh taste like, I have seen it at the hawker centre on steamed rice cakes and never dared to try it; now I will give it a go’.”

The possibilities seem boundless. But when asked how necessary it remains to modernise enduring local dishes, Chef Derrick Ang of the Mount Faber Leisure Group reaffirmed the importance of retaining a level of authenticity.

“We could add more excitement and variety to the dishes by interpreting it differently, using modern cooking methods and adding new ingredients to the dish that will bring it to the next level,” he said. “(But) I am a strong believer in retaining the original flavours of the dishes perfected by our predecessors.”

For Low, it was important to retain the “spirit” of the original dish, as opposed to just the flavours. “I would like to think that the beauty of this is that there are really no boundaries as long as the spirit of the original dish is preserved in the new dishes,” Low said, adding that in extreme cases, “a dish that has ‘gone too far’ will probably be good in generating debate about preserving the original dish”.

TOMORROW’S TABLE

Others like young Malcolm Lee of Candlenut Kitchen and veteran Violet Oon seem bound by more pragmatic agendas.

“For traditional Nyonya dishes, what we are cooking are authentic old fashioned recipes — with what we feel are necessary improvements to presentation and the quality of meat (and select ingredients). The challenge is to take home cooking and make it deluxe and comparable to restaurant cuisines anywhere in the world,” Oon said.

This is no to say that she has chosen to shun the pleasures of progression. “Every culture must evolve otherwise it remains atrophied in time. Being a sociologist and student of political science as well as geography, I know that nothing stays still — today, global warming is a human phenomenon but it has also been a natural phenomenon. So this is part of life, part of the history of the world in its natural as well as in its humanly developed state.”

From making restaurant quality dishes more “exciting” - by serving wagyu, for example, from a coffeeshop stall - to dishing out one of the most expensive fried rice dishes on the island, Damian D’Silva of local gastrobar Immigrants is no stranger to dipping his toes in unchartered waters. But rather than reinvent the wheel, the chef is now exploring the illimitability of pairing local food with a fine dram, even two.

For this year’s SFF, D’Silva has chosen to pair his buah keluak fried rice with the 12-year-old Nikka Taketsuru Japanese whisky. “Beer will fill one up easily. Whisky, on the other hand, has a lot of body and character that will help make the dish flavourful and enhance the quality of the buah keluak,” he explained.

“Food and alcohol pairing has been around for a while. What we are trying to do at Immigrants is to educate Singaporeans on local food and the different ways to pair food,” he added.

“There is no need to pair local food with just wine or beer. Even for beer, we would like Singaporeans to try craft beers instead of the usual offerings like Carlsberg or Tiger. We offer more than 20 types of Japanese, American and European craft beers to get Singaporeans to try pairing it with their food.”

That said, the task of carving the future with a spoon ultimately lies in the hands of the consumers. And don’t we have every confidence in our voracious taste for sweet success?

Visit www.yoursingapore.com/sff for details on the Singapore Food Festival