Food & Hotel Asia 2012 Day 2 – FHA Culinary Challenge: Plated Appetisers
Shooting this series of photographs is a love and hate relationship. Absolutely elated to be able to come face to face with these plates of delectables but the pain sets in when you can’t taste them. These are some of the entries for the “Hot and Cold Appetiser” category for the FHA Culinary Challenge, held in conjunction with Food & Hotel Asia 2012 just last week at the Singapore EXPO. The four-day event was well-attended by members of the trade as well as chefs from all over the world. I think the standards of the Culinary Challenge is very high, with participation from chefs from all over Asia as well as representatives from the major culinary institutions from the region. Here’s a really small selection of the pieces which I felt are really outstanding in terms of presentation. I can’t comment on their taste and unami-ness but some of them really scored in their visual appeal.
And thankfully, I was sufficiently sound to note the composition of most of the pieces, in hope that some of these presentations could be replicated in our own very kitchens. Be inspired.
For Alice @ Pavé Chocolates and Confections
Was it love at first sight? I wouldn’t dare say so but one thing we can say for sure is, the feelings were intense!
Weekend dinners around Katong is a very convenient option for us. With me working near Parkway Parade over weekends, and J staying nearby along Haig Road, we’d dined here quite a lot over the last few years, revisiting familiar and favorite joints over and over again. And this area had seen some interesting changes and inclusions over the last year or so. First was the relocation and expansion of Awfully Chocolate, and then new dining places and concepts sprung up. We saw a new Thai restaurant, a new ramen joint, a gelato shop named Coccogelo that does very wicked renditions of flavours like pistachio and “sticky rice”, and a restaurant that does laksa steamboat! Patisseries also score well in this area, with a rather high density of shops like Obolo, Gobi, Temptations, The French Bakery all within walking distance of each other. And then there’s the new kid of the block, Pavé Chocolates and Confections, the latest patisserie cum chocolatier that opened here barely a year back. Oddly, we’d walked past this place several times on our way to and from our usual makan joints but somehow never really felt compiled to step in. Usually its because we were rushing to a reservation somewhere or just too full after dinner. About 2 months’ back we finally did but it was kinda late that day and the selections from the pastry section was very limited and didn’t really appeal to us then. But I made a mental note to check this place out again when we can and last weekend we finally did.
We opted for a takeaway instead of dining in since I didn’t have my camera with me that day and it would be such a waste to not document something from this place. We deliberated over the pastry section, listening intently to the descriptions provided by the lovely staff and at the same time staring hard at each delectable piece of work, hoping for some divine intervention, a sign from the pastry gods to bestow us with any whizz of inspiration. It was at that precise moment when I saw her, in an alluring rouge number, gleaming at us in an almost seductive manner.
I bent down and whispered to her softly if she was interested…ahem. Without a word, she merely smiled back flirtatiously and the deal was sealed.
She followed us back and I’m so glad she did…
travellingfoodies 