Isn’t Singaporean food our own recipes cooked in Singapore?
One food critic who writes for Traveller in Australia, called out by mrbrown, says otherwise, and even made sure to mention why we were excluded from his list of top ten Asian cuisine.
In the article posted last week, here is what Ben Groundwater had to say about Singaporean food:
There’s a notable omission on this list: Singapore. And I hear you, the food there is mind-blowingly good. However, a lot of that cuisine is other people’s: it’s Chinese, Indian, Malay and European. For that reason I’ve had to miss it out. Let’s say it came 11th.
Let’s just ignore the fact that we have a Michelin star food stall for a moment, all right?
mrbrown seemed to say it all with his tweet:
“Food writer” omits Singapore because “a lot of that cuisine is other people's”. Malaysia also has a lot of cooking that you can say originated from Indonesia and India what. What kind of cockamamie article this is?
— mrbrown (@mrbrown) March 2, 2018
He followed up with a Facebook post on the matter, discussing his view:
Here is what mrbrown said on the matter:
Looks like I hurt somebody’s feelings.
Look, you can say our food not nice. You can also say our food is mind-blowingly good. But to omit our country from a list of Asian food because our cuisine is “other people’s” just shows a woeful ignorance of our food heritage and culture.
In his post, mrbrown took issue with the fact that the writer dismissed Singaporean cuisine as just a copy of others. He said that he didn’t mind even if the writer said the food was bad. He also called the writer ignorant about Singaporean food, heritage, and culture.
And of course, the original writer of the post from Australia replied to mrbrown’s tweet.
In the replies above, you can see that Ben initially downplayed mrbrown’s importance. He also called out sub-tweeting and said that the karma this will generate could be pretty bad.
After some other people replied saying that Ben did not know his food history.
What do other netizens say?
Here are some comments on his post coming from users all over the world (not just Singapore):
Other people called the writer out the logic he used.
Some also used the Japanese and Korean food in the list as an example.
Other commenters showed their support for Singaporean food.
Others also thought that the writer did not justify the cuisine well enough.
Even more questions about the logic the writer used.
Others went in further and expressed
While some mentioned the actual food common in Singapore.
Someone from Singapore didn’t care about all that.
What do you think about this post?
According to the original article posted by Ben, since Singaporean cuisine is just “copied” from others, it did not deserve to be in the top ten. Only the top eleven. But what exactly did he mean? At first he said since the food was copied it didn’t deserve to be on the list and then he said that we should be on the eleventh spot.
While a ranking of any sort on Asian food (or any sort of food) is difficult and subjective (unless you are licensed to rate food by a world-renowned body), excluding something entirely and even mentioning why is quite the move.
What do you think of this post? Let us know in the comments!
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