Singapore Chilli Crab Festival in London
Singapore Food Festival by Tiger Beer Could Be Better Organised
Sep 9, 2008
Blame it on the high popularity of this event, but many who turned up at the widely publicised Singapore Chilli Crab Festival in Brick Lane, London, found to their dismay that they had to handle messy chilli crab while standing up, sometimes without the right utensils!
The last weekend of August was the perfect time to sample some exotic culture, especially since the weather in London was nice and warm that weekend. People excited about the Singapore Chilli Crab Festival who travelled to Brick Lane were either seduced into the South African festival in the restaurant facing the main street, or were lost. Unfortunately, lack of sign-posting made it difficult to get to the Singapore Festival easily. That was just the first of many disappointments.
Food Queues
Singapore is known for being well-organised, yet the Festival was sadly not so. Once in the Festival, visitors made a bee-line to the food stalls, sponsored by Kiasu Restaurant (a Southeast Asian restaurant in Bayswater that serves up scrumptious food from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines). Incidentally, the word ‘kiasu’ means ‘scared of losing’, a typical Singaporean phrase. Visitors were first faced with a long queue, where they had to purchase food coupons with money. It was a bit disappointing to see that most vendors were not Singaporean, not even Southeast Asian. Next, to get to the food meant a second queue, a chaotic business that led to money changing mistakes and niggling annoyances. And once you got your chilli crab it was difficult to find a seat, resulting in big groups sitting on the concrete ground! Luckily the sun shone warmly in the Festival’s favour, otherwise one would be left standing with messy crab, messy hands and messy beer bottle!
Woks please, not Lunchboxes
It would have been lovely to see real chefs frying up a wide selection of exotic dishes right in front of visitors’ eyes, using their well-burnt woks. Instead guests were given neatly packed, rather sanitised lunch boxes. Indicative of Singapore’s clean culture? Perhaps. But in Singapore, hawker centres are a firm favourite, where locals can seat themselves down, order a lime-lemon juice easily and gawk at their food while it gets cooked.
Tiger Beer
Tiger Beer, the sponsor of this Chilli Crab Festival, offered plentiful beer in bottles or buckets, but the beer did not come cheap – at three to four pounds a bottle, one could have probably bought it in a restaurant or oriental shop for less! As it was a weekend, most visitors took it in their stride and sat down to ‘picnic’ on their spicy crab, char kway teow or Hainanese chicken rice. For another pound or two, one could get ‘chin chow’ (dark-coloured grass jelly drink), lime-lemon juice (refreshing and bitingly raw) or soya bean drink. One of the stalls also sold Peranakan pastries such as curry puffs, delicious food that is seldom found in London.
Other Highlights
Visitors could also get a quick massage, have their hands tattooed by henna or watch some calligraphy demonstration. Musicians, dancers and singers performed, though they were not given much limelight. There were a handful of stalls selling Singaporean goods, one with mooncakes on display, another with boxes of how-to-cook-Singaporean-style ingredients, and another with Southeast Asian titbits and Yeo Hiap Seng drinks. The men’s toilets, conveniently positioned near the exit, soon became used by the women also...Perhaps in the future, organisers will take these comments into consideration, when planning this exciting event.
About Singapore, the clean and green City
Singapore is a lovely island, resting near the tip of the Malaysian peninsula, and it is known as a food paradise, offering tourists and locals a wide selection of food choices, even dining round the clock, all at super cheap prices. But more than that: Singapore is a thriving city because its infrastructure is well-planned. If the Tiger Beer Singapore Chilli Crab Festival can bring out these Singaporean values, whilst adding some native faces to the festival to liven up the atmosphere (by the way, Singaporeans speak English fluently as it is their first language), this Festival would have had a much better chance at impressing their visitors.
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