74 Chris Hudson
A culinary eco-adventure
The excellence and multi-cultural variety of food in Singapore are a national fetish
and one of the key ways the nation represents itself (see Tarulevicz 2012). Eating
intersects with other forms of sensory excitement to help produce the combined
power of eco-culture, consumption, and affect. The convergence of sensory
regimes is part of what has been identified as “the eatertainment experience”
(Pine and Gilmore 2011; Ritzer 2010, p. 19). The term captures the notion of the
aestheticisation of eating as a new commodity form that arises out of embodied
experience and the merging of sensations, with taste making up only part of the
sensory response. Eating occupies a significant place in the program of buzz-
generating attractions that crowd the Singapore calendar of events. Along with the
Singapore Arts Festival, the Singapore Garden Festival, the National Day Rally
Parade, and many other major events, the Singapore Food Festival not only engages
consumers through the generation of culinary excitement, it also intensifies and
magnifies it in the way that Thrift suggested (2005, p. 7). The integration of eating
into the “City in a Garden” environment makes possible a seemingly infinite
array of eatertainment experiences in eco-enhanced territories of feeling. There
is a considerable number of food-focused annual events in Singapore, including
the World Gourmet Summit (established in 1997 and encompassing culinary
masterclasses, gourmet safaris, vintner and celebrity dinners); Ganbarou Nippon
(Taste of Japan); Food Fiesta@Expo; Halal 2012 (“food, lifestyle, wedding, Indo
Xtravaganza”); and Crave! Singapore. “Crave! Singapore” was a program of
culinary adventures associated with the 2012 Singapore Food Festival. Its website
addressed the individual consumer directly and promised not only food but also
adventure, satisfaction, and delight in a “natural” experiencescape:
We are offering a culinary adventure of major proportions ... Embark on an
exotic, epicurean journey... take a trip down to an authentic fishing kelong [in
the Malay language, a wooden platform built over water] where the best catch
of the day will be transformed into a sumptuous seafood dish, just for you!
(Crave Singapore! 2012)“Crave! Singapore” promises no less than an odyssey of major proportions that
requires consumers to embrace the adventure and allow their senses to be assailed
by the environment as well as the taste and smell of food.
Popular travel website Travel Wire Asia lists food as one of the “top ten reasons
why we adore Singapore” and claims that “Singapore is a food paradise” (Travel
Wire Asia 2012). Eating, it seems, is still one of the prime reasons for visiting
Singapore. Jonathan Kandell, writing in the Los Angeles Times, calls Singapore a
“city for the senses” while subscribing to the widely held myth that Singaporeans
hardly ever have sex; he asserts that food has replaced sex as the major passion.
Food, he proposes, has become the ultimate object of desire (Kandell 2002). As
a visitor to Singapore, he elevates food to the level of fetish and depicts his own
relationship to food that is not just sensual but ecstatic: