Hawkers can't charge more for their food because Singaporeans have a "mental block" against paying more for local food in general, according to chef Violet Oon. She was speaking to 938LIVE's Bharati Jagdish about local cuisine, and what inspired her to start cooking in the first place.

SINGAPORE: “The way that the hawker would actually survive, honestly, is maybe if they go to London, Paris or New York. Because there, they're judging as a dish compared to other dishes that they're used to paying for. They'll just judge it as a lovely dish.”



Chef Violet Oon’s philosophy is that Singapore food – whether it’s hawker food, family recipes or well-loved landmark dishes – should be among cuisines at the top of the food chain. Singapore cuisine, said Oon, deserves the best treatment, environment and respect. For her, the recently-opened National Kitchen by Violet Oon at the National Gallery is a reflection of this.



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She started as a food critic in the '70s, and her mission became to capture Singapore’s food heritage, to ensure that it endures. In recognition of her work, Oon was recently inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame. Oon went On the Record with Bharati Jagdish about giving heritage food its due, and how her love for storytelling evolved into a larger cause.

Violet Oon: As a reporter, I started writing about food in 1974 and in those days, there was no social media, no Internet and, as a reporter, you're the window to the world for your readers. As a journalist, I had access to chefs' kitchens and, being a reporter, you could ask them anything and they would share it with you.

So I started thinking: "Can I ask them to teach me how to cook?” But not to give me a recipe, because that's theirs. It's not that they don't want to share their secrets, it's that they don't even know what secrets they have. Teach me technique.



For example, in Chinese cooking, when you say “boiled chicken”, you never put a chicken into water unless it's boiling already. In French cooking, when you say “boil a chicken”, it's put into cold water. Every technique is different, so I would say: "Show me."



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And then I did it with homemakers. Because, it’s what they do with their fingers, what they do with their smelling. Those are the techniques which are very precious. So I started in those days to take photographs. Then recipes. And I got well-known for capturing what other people had to share.



Idli. (Photo: Violet Oon)

To me, it was so important to learn how to do (it) properly. Like in our restaurant we have idli, and we make it from scratch. We get the idli rice, and then we get the urad dal, soak it for hours, then we grind it. Of course now, with the electric grinder. And then, let it ferment for 12 hours. It rises. We don't use a powder. So I think those are essential things to preserve and to keep because I think most Singapore families don't realise that their dining room and their kitchen, if the grandmother or mother is still cooking, is actually a part of Singapore history.



OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD



Bharati Jagdish: You started writing about food in the '70s. What are the main differences in the culinary landscape between then and today?



Violet Oon: It was, of course, a much less sophisticated place. I mean, the whole world was much less sophisticated. People for sure, they loved the Singapore food. It was so important to us. The street food is a bit different now. It was real street food then. I remember going to London in '61 to '63. I was with my parents, and I missed wanton mee. You can actually taste it and smell it. I know of students who, even in the last few years, if they are in Singapore, and their friends are in Oxford or whatever, they will put a phone next to the char kway teow seller, and then let them hear the frying, and this will make the friend cry.



Now, you don't find that sentiment for food in most other cultures. You don't find it in Americans. You don't find it, I think, even in the French. So there's this amazing love relationship.



Bharati Jagdish: Why do you think we have this relationship with food, when others don't?



Violet Oon: Well, the first thing is that we're an immigrant society. And I think, when you emigrated one or two centuries ago, it was a push factor. Life was so hard. It's either famine, flood or drought. And so, you came from a very hard life, and when you hear about the immigrants from China, a lot of them would die on the boat. So the fittest would survive. And I reckon that when you're an immigrant society, the most important thing is to have a fat baby. I don't know whether you realise that.



Bharati Jagdish: Yes, yes. An indication of prosperity, right?



Violet Oon: Yes. The fat baby. That I have a baby that survives one month and is fat. And that's why we have this obesity problem in America. It's an immigrant society. And to a certain extent, in Singapore as well. But I think that the prosperity that Singapore has enjoyed has translated itself, somehow, into enjoying food. People spend much more on food here than, I think, in a lot of other societies.



Bharati Jagdish: To what extent do you think it's because we have no other identity? No other markers that could define our identity?



Violet Oon: To a certain extent, I would say the only marker out of the home. From what I understand, let's say, there were hawkers along Boat Quay for example. They would feed the workers who were working there. And I heard that a very famous curry restaurant started in Tank Road, where the father would cook the meals for the month for the workers. And that was your only external sharing of different cultures. Because your dance, your other things, will be kept within your four walls. So I think that's one reason. That it was a sharing from the beginning. The Chinese would just see how Indians eat, and vice versa. That was the external sharing. And, around the world, going into food is the cheapest way to buy style.



Bharati Jagdish: Explain that.



Violet Oon: If you're a young person, and not stylish, to be stylish about dance takes a long, long time. You can't bluff. You have to study it. Being stylish about music takes a long, long time. Even pop music. You have to understand genres. Dress - you have to spend a fortune. But how you eat defines you. There was a movie. Pretty Woman. And she (the female lead) had the most beautiful clothes, but she ate wrongly and it defined her – that she wasn't stylish. If you are going to be buying into style, as a young executive, the cheapest way is to learn how to hold a wine glass, fake a bit, twirl it around, find out a bit about foie gras. Then you can be stylish over the dining table. Plus you can enjoy it at the same time.



Bharati Jagdish: Yeah, but is it stylish to be enjoying a plate of char kway teow at a hawker centre?



Violet Oon: It is stylish in Singapore. There's always this reverse style where it's even more stylish to know about “food by the drain”, because it's a discovery. Even for the modern tourist. You don't want to go to the obvious places, it's got to be a discovery somewhere.



Bharati Jagdish: Today, there is a lot of talk about our Singapore’s culinary heritage being threatened. I’m sure it was very different in the '70s when you first started looking seriously at food.



Violet Oon: I was born in 1949 in a very middle-class environment. I grew up with Robinson's, CK Tang and all that. But when we celebrated SG50 last year, I realised that a lot of people remember the kampung, which I do not remember at all. So there are two lives going on. At that time though, there was not even the question of the threat to hawker food, because that was all we had. People were hawkers and that was their life.



It was quite pleasant to be a hawker then, because it wasn't built up. Very often it was under one coconut tree, a pushcart. It was less hot, I think, because fewer buildings, less air-conditioning, less everything.



It was quite pleasant and people would tell me about their mother hawking illegally. The mother would make epok epok, the daughter will bring the basket before school, and sell it downstairs. It was a more village, a more pleasant environment to be a hawker. Very often it was outdoors. It was breezy. It was not like now, under a roof, it's cooped up, you're all together.



COOKING – FROM HOBBY TO LIFE’S WORK



Bharati Jagdish: We’ll talk more about that in a while, but why did you want to learn how to cook?



Violet Oon: Well, because my mother was liberated. She didn't cook. She was a secretary in the 1940s. And in those days, women were not expected to be superwomen. If you're a career woman, you did not touch a bit of housework. Nothing. Women in my time did not learn to cook because that was the first sign of bondage. Daughters and wives were supposed to cook for the men in their family. So they threw off their bra and they threw off the cooking. So I would depend on my aunts to be cooking Nyonya food to enjoy it.



To cut a long story short, I learned to cook the way a man cooks - for fun. Honestly, it's a fun thing, they show off, but it's not that, "Oh, I have to feed my family every day."



Bharati Jagdish: What did your mother think of it?



Violet Oon: Oh, she thought it was so fun. It was interesting as a hobby. Being Peranakan, we are a song and dance people, and in the first generation, there was always extra money, so what would happen in the family is if you have four children - and this is not a joke, it's the truth - one has to learn piano, one violin, one viola, one double bass, so that they can perform at night for the the family. It's true. There was no TV, and it was a very Jane Austen lifestyle.



Bharati Jagdish: So you would sit in the drawing room, so to speak.



Violet Oon: And entertain after dinner. It's true. And so my mother thought, "You have to learn everything." So I learnt sewing, I learnt typewriting, learnt shorthand, singing, ballet, oriental dance. Being Peranakan, whatever you learn, you have to use it. So you have to dance for people, and it was very embarrassing. I would dance in front of my parents' friends and I had to put on this Balinese costume and dance. Or you have to sing for people. So I tell people I'm actually shameless. Because having gone through that, nothing makes me embarrassed.



Bharati Jagdish: Did you enjoy it though?



Violet Oon: Yeah, quite fun. So it's very good sometimes, to put your children through embarrassing moments. So that as adults, they will be able to handle it. You have to put your children through embarrassing moments because when they're young, it’s actually very easy to handle.







Bharati Jagdish: You said you started learning cooking for fun, like a man would, right? How did it turn into something serious, where now, you’re known as Singapore’s food Ambassador and you’ve created the menu and recipes for your own restaurant.



Violet Oon: I also don't know. Maybe because I studied Sociology in university, Political Science and Geography. I suppose that all those have given me a sense of place, a sense of where you belong in a society. So as a food writer, you're always telling stories.



I wanted to chronicle what we had, because I found it so fascinating. I find that if I go to a Singapore Indian family, they think what they're doing is normal, but it actually comes from, - oh my goodness, the family was in Ipoh, then they were Chetti Melaka - and that's why they are eating what they are. They don't even realise that.



Bharati Jagdish: That there are all these influences in one little simple dish.



Violet Oon: And that fascinated me. I think fascination is so important. What is the story? The word passion is over-used. It’s interest. You put as much interest into learning it properly as you would put interest into learning how to operate on a person. It's exact. There's no difference in the approach. And so, it's not agak agak, you know? My recipes have been written, and people tell me they follow them exactly … get it exactly right.



Bharati Jagdish: But many Asian chefs do very well with the agak agak approach.



Violet Oon: The agak agak is not really agak agak. Because they do it so often, whatever they are putting in the dish is actually exact.



Bharati Jagdish: So the only thing is they haven’t measured it or need to.



Violet Oon: Yes.



Bharati Jagdish: But you said technique is much more important.



Violet Oon: Yes, so YouTube is wonderful, right? You can just go and see them cooking. Because the recipe alone doesn't mean anything.



CULINARY HERITAGE UNDER THREAT



Bharati Jagdish: Now we're in an era where half the world is bemoaning the loss of heritage food in Singapore. Everything from, say, rojak to char kway teow. And some of your fellow food aficionados have written books about this. What is your stance on it though?



Violet Oon: I actually try do it and not write about it. Let's say, I'm serving rojak in my restaurant. We're doing it the way it should be done, the way a lot of hawkers cannot afford to do. For example, our dried chilli, we actually soak it and grind it ourselves. A lot of hawkers have to buy it from the supplier. Now there are preservatives in that.

Bharati Jagdish: And why do hawkers have to do that? Because people are not willing to fork out money for hawker food, even for good hawker food and the hawker has to keep his costs down.



Violet Oon: Yes, they can't afford it. Let's say, the hawker wants an assistant, that assistant will cost about S$5 to S$7 per hour. A 10-hour day to an employer is S$50 to S$70. Let’s say you have two assistants. All that goes into the cost.



Bharati Jagdish: You’re paying these costs. But you're also charging relatively-speaking much more for the rojak, an arm and a leg, right?



Violet Oon: But the thing is that we're making it the way it should be made. Our costs are higher because we're paying chefs. It’s not an arm and a leg. We're charging based on the fact this is a gourmet dish. Now, if you're willing to pay, let's say, S$25 for aglio olio, I don't see why you're not willing pay that for char kway teow, which people do when they go to coffee houses. It's also about the environment in that case.



Bharati Jagdish: Your operation is elevated. But part of the heritage and authentic cuisine experience is also the environment – the authentic hawker centre environment, ensuring that these hawkers with skills can continue making a decent living and their skills and talents don’t die with them. So your restaurant may be helping preserve this cuisine for the high-end crowd, but it doesn’t translate into any help in terms of furthering the cause of the salt-of-the-earth hawker, does it?



Violet Oon: But let's say we charge, I'm not sure how much for rojak, you should be willing to pay in the hawker centre, maybe S$5 to S$6, rather than S$2.50.



Bharati Jagdish: Right, so you agree that the hawkers should be getting paid more as well? For that food.



Violet Oon: Yeah, to justify their time. They're supposed to make a profit. Living costs are so high in Singapore. Is it worth doing it, unless they can have a net profit of S$3,000 to S$5,000 a month?

Butter prawns. (Photo: Violet Oon)

A “MENTAL BLOCK” AGAINST SINGAPORE CUISINE



Bharati Jagdish: Have you ever asked people who come to your restaurant why they're willing to pay more than S$20 for a Singapore dish in your restaurant? But they're not willing pay slightly more at a hawker stall for that same dish.



Violet Oon: Well, we did this precisely because we thought, why is Singapore food at the bottom of the chain? It’s supposed to be among the best of the world. It should be in the environment which is the best in the world. It should have the service. It should be exactly matching whatever France or Italy has. Unfortunately, we're not able to charge those prices. For what we're giving, it is still much lower than Italian and French food in restaurants.



Bharati Jagdish: Why don’t you charge comparative prices?



Violet Oon: Because there’s resistance. A mental block.



Bharati Jagdish: A mental block about paying more for local food in general?



Violet Oon: Yes.



Bharati Jagdish: Why do you think this block exists? Some have said it’s because a lot of local food was street food in the early years, there’s an unrealistic expectation that it should be cheap even today when things are way more expensive than in the '70s.



Violet Oon: Yes, I think it's quite impossible, because it's a mental block.



Bharati Jagdish: How would you make a case for paying more for local food?



Violet Oon: For example, the idli that I'm cooking is the way your mother would make it. How many would actually bother to do all the grinding, because do they have the time? And the fermentation and all. I think some still do. It’s not only the best ingredients. It’s also about not watering it down. Something which is watery is much cheaper to cook. I mean, it's so easy. You just add more water. Rendang is a long process and the gravy that we use is a very thick gravy. Gravy is the most costly. If I have a thin gravy, it will cost one-eighth of the price.



Bharati Jagdish: Why should people pay more for this than for French and Italian food?



Violet Oon: They're not humble recipes. Any Asian recipe is much more sophisticated than a Western recipe.



Bharati Jagdish: How so?



Violet Oon: So much goes into it. For example, I have people coming to me from cooking schools. They do French, they learn Italian cooking. And they say getting Asian recipes correct is more difficult. Because there's so much you don't even realise. To you, it's humble. But the amount of things that go in, the amount of techniques, is much more sophisticated.



Just remember, Asian culinary culture is thousands of years old. Indian, Chinese. When you cook French food, it's cream, something and something.



Italian food is like, maybe, four, five or six things. Making idli is not humble. Who on earth in Italy would know how to ferment from scratch without yeast? Like aglio olio is pasta, garlic, olive oil, chili. Char kway teow has much more effort, much more work, many more ingredients. But we can’t charge more. The hawker can’t charge more. Because there's a mental block. There's a resistance.



Bharati Jagdish: But what you charge is still way higher than hawker food.



Violet Oon: It has to be. Like when you go to a coffee house, you're quite happy to pay a certain amount because of the environment, and then they give you really good pieces of chicken. Whether you use frozen or chilled meat makes a difference. Things like that. Your prawn quality, and all that goes into the price of what you're doing. For the hawker, actually (food blogger) Leslie Tay did say that if you can charge something about S$8, you're okay.



Bharati Jagdish: Yet people a lot of people say, "What, S$8 for a plate of char kway teow? I only want to pay S$3.50 or S$4."



Violet Oon: That is okay. Then you should be very happy with what you get.



Bharati Jagdish: If the quality isn't great. Then again, there's this other consideration - hawker food is meant to be affordable food for any class of Singaporean. How do you think that can be managed and balanced between giving the hawker his due, yet ensuring that food is affordable to every Singaporean?



Violet Oon: Low-income people will just have to eat ordinary hawker food. Unless you can afford the better hawker food. I have to be paid for my talent. Like you pay Bette Midler more than you would pay a so-called ordinary singer. For the few hawkers who are supposed to be superstars, you have to pay superstar prices. You can do it when you're in another country. I heard that in Russia, they had chicken rice at S$40.



Bharati Jagdish: Because it's exotic?



Violet Oon: No. They're judging it on the food. In this sort of restaurant, this is what I pay for chicken, I will pay this for chicken. There's no block about that. I suppose the way that the hawker would actually survive, honestly, is maybe if they go to London, Paris or New York.



Bharati Jagdish: Why only there?



Violet Oon: Because there, it will be appreciated with the price that they should be getting.



They'll just judge it as a lovely dish. They're judging it as a dish compared to other dishes that they're used to paying for.



Violet Oon goes On the Record.

PRESERVING HAWKER CENTRE CULTURE – A LOST CAUSE?

Bharati Jagdish: But in Singapore, how can this mental block about Singapore food be removed?



Violet Oon: I think the only way it can move forward, honestly, is acknowledging that people are quite happy to pay for it in hotels. I go to Straits Kitchen, I'm quite happy to pay S$65 for this buffet.



Bharati Jagdish: Yes, but that’s so unfair to the poor guy who is cooking it in a hawker center in Bedok.



Violet Oon: Yes, but there’s no other way. There’s such a mental block, I don’t think we can overcome it. You see, we brought these top restaurants around the world to Singapore and young people here start restaurants and they have what they call omakase menus. And they're not even famous but it’s S$120 per person for a six-course meal and people are very happily paying it. The food cost is minimal, but you're not paying for the food, but for the environment and you're paying for the talent. You're paying for that person's talent in doing it.



My point is that if people are not happily paying more for hawker food, the hawker culture is definitely going to die, unless others like me take it and put it in their restaurants. At least I can charge more for it than the hawker can.



Let's say, I have this satay. And suppose it’s the best satay, because I'm cooking it as it's supposed to be cooked, using the best meat, for example, which people normally don't.



That’s why people come and eat with us, because they're getting a taste that they know they cannot get somewhere else. So it has to be people like me. The other young chefs I think in Singapore, who maybe then go and pursue and find out a few more authentic recipes, and then serve it in their restaurants.



I'm doing some, and I think a few others are doing it too in a cafe. The food is authentic, but they're doing what we're doing, putting it in a cafe. Prices are different. And even double or triple.



When I hear that the sons and daughters are doing it, and they're doing something their father does, and they want to be exactly the same, but it's definitely not the same price as the father’s. I've even seen in Chinatown, a stall in hawker centre that looks totally different. It's been “decor-ed”. There's a designer, there's a branding, there's everything. That's very encouraging.



Bharati Jagdish: But part of the beauty of enjoying such authentic food is also the authentic hawker centre environment. By saying that the only way to give the food its due is to take it overseas or into restaurants, and the fact that a lot of young people don’t want to run stalls in hawker centres the way their parents did, are you saying that trying to preserve hawker centre culture is a losing battle?



Violet Oon on intellectual property. (1)

Violet Oon: You know, life goes on. For example, in Bangkok, it's so romantic. But let's say if the conditions improved a bit for those people economically. They're not going do that, they're going be somewhere else. Life changes, and what we're talking about - authentic food and preserving it - is something that only started occurring 20 to 30 years ago, because before that, they were in the street.



So it changes. It changes with the times, and I think that's what you have to live with. The most important thing which is what I did, is to actually record the cooking. That whole technique has to be video-ed and recorded, and the ingredients they use. It can be locked in time, and somebody else can do it. It doesn't have to be today or tomorrow. It can be in 10 years' time.



Now, if you want to really keep that authentic experience, I don't know, Professor Tommy Koh has done it, a lot of people have. How do you do it? How do you put a value to it? They’re trying to sell this cake shop for millions of dollars. I don't follow social media, but people seem to think that it should be given free. But why? I mean, Steve Jobs, or Facebook, they invented something as teenagers. They're now multi-billionaires. It's about intellectual property. So, I think, the other thing Singaporeans seem to think is that the hawker food is ours, so we should own the recipes. “We”, as in Singaporeans. And that if people want to sell their recipes, they're being very ...



Bharati Jagdish: Money-minded.

Violet Oon: Yeah, money-minded. Why not? We are not the charity home that they have to support with their blood, sweat and tears. They have to make a profit. They have to make more because the cost of living has gone up. Every year, you want a pay rise, I think the hawker also must have a pay rise, right? Now, are you going to pay them for their recipes or techniques, because if you're not going to pay them, why should they do it? They might as well just die with it.



BEYOND FOOD



Bharati Jagdish: Let's talk about the business aspect of food. You’ve had your own share of failures over the years. I remember, when I was a kid, you had a cafe at the Victoria Theatre, and that closed after some time. What was dealing with failure like?



Violet Oon: Well, I'm okay. Creative people somehow find it easier to deal with failure.



Because a lot of things that you create, fail. If you're a playwright, one play is wonderful, the next play may be a bomb. It fails. So I think that creative process prepares you for things not working out.



Bharati Jagdish: What went wrong there?



Violet Oon: You can't run a business as a creative person, because there are so many other things to think about and you're too confident. A lot of people do that. "Oh, I take some money and open a restaurant." You hear, maybe, like 15 restaurants opening a week, and I hear a lot close, right?



Right now, I have my two children who run the business. They came to me. They are the ones who wanted to do it, and we have a great business partner now. But I'm the chef, I do the recipe development.



Bharati Jagdish: You obviously care about things beyond food. You were talking earlier about the various skills you've picked over the years. I understand you were an opera singer. Why didn’t you stick with that career?



Violet Oon: Oh, it wasn't a career. I started singing since the age of 12 in England. And for a short window, I was Singapore's best singer. I was in competitions abroad. It wasn't a career, because there was no career in Singapore. Everybody was an amateur, nobody got paid for anything, compared to now.



I played Princess Tuptim in The King and I. I wanted to study voice when I finished university, but then I realised I didn't have the stamina. Talent is one thing, but I didn't have that physical stamina, and I couldn't make it. I knew it would be a struggle. Sometimes recognising (what) you don't have it is very important. In pursuit of what you love, you can love it, you can have a passion, but that's not the point. The point is do you have it? And you have to be introspective. I didn't have that stamina.



After a certain time, my voice would get tired. I think as a person, if you can keep on recognising your limitations, and what you can do, it’s very important.



THE VIOLET OON DIET



Bharati Jagdish: Let’s go back to food. What do you like eating?



Violet Oon: My favourite things are very simple. I actually eat raw vegetables for breakfast.



Bharati Jagdish: Why?



Violet Oon: Fortunately, I love salad. I love Nyonya food, but it's not something I would eat every day, because it's quite rich. At home, I like something simple, like porridge.



It's very Chinese – although I'm Peranakan – but this culture of porridge is like comfort food. I eat very simply.



Bharati Jagdish: Why?



Violet Oon: My father brought me up to be simple. I was put into a convent, to be a boarder. For no reason other than I have to learn how to live frugally. My father said that, actually, it's very easy to prepare for a life of luxury, so we better prepare for World War III. In a convent, you get the most horrible food in the world.



Bharati Jagdish: Bread and water?



Violet Oon: No, but there's no taste, nothing. I told my father one day, there was this horrible thing we were given to eat, and a girl threw it in the dustbin, and the nun asked her to take it out and eat it.



My father said: "Good. You cannot throw away food.”



So, he was very liberal and very social-minded. When I was in Marymount, the treat was chicken rice once a week. And the cook would go down and buy it. And we would have three pieces of chicken and the rice. It was the most amazing feast of our lives. We would wait for it, wait at the steps for the chicken rice to come.



And I feel that to make the enjoyment of food a matter of life and death, as some people do, is not correct. Because to millions of people around the world, having food or no food is a matter of life and death. I don't think it should be obsessive.



Bharati Jagdish: But you have to be obsessive about creating it.



Violet Oon: In creating it. But in eating, I'm not obsessed with "I must have the best food", because it's a philosophy. It's not correct, people are starving. People don't have enough food. Why are you so obsessed? I can go to any stall, no taste also okay.



THE VALUE OF ACCOLADES



Bharati Jagdish: There’s been a big hoo-ha over the last few months over Singapore's Michelin guide. It’s a controversial guide – some say the inspectors are biased in favour of French cuisine, chefs can game the system by giving the inspectors what they want which may not be what your customers want – things such as overly-attentive service. It's driven some chefs around the world nuts, this obsession with getting into the guide. How badly do you want to be in it?



Violet Oon: I'm not sure. Now that we're feeding customers and my son is so adamant about this - the most important person is the person that comes and eats in your place, and we have to see what makes them happy. I think, in the end, whatever accolades anybody gives you, the most important is the person who actually comes and eats, and pays the money.



Bharati Jagdish: So you don't care whether or not your restaurant is in the guide?



Violet Oon: I suppose I should care, right? But at the moment, it's a new restaurant. We're still concerned about how we're going to make our customers happy, and we have people booking for weddings and, to us, for people who have a special occasion, we have to make sure it's special, and the customer experience is the most important.



Chilli crab. (Photo: Violet Oon)

Bharati Jagdish: You mentioned that you like telling stories. What fascinates you the most about the stories that you’re hearing and telling about food, and through food?



Violet Oon: I've been so fascinated by our own personal Singapore story, and the story that I'm telling is the food story, and even in our restaurant, on the walls, we have pictures on the wall of a 1965 food truck, of a soya sauce factory, of different people. That still fascinates me. That whole Singapore story, the food story.



I'm not doing hawker food. I'm doing the Singapore story, which may be a combination of hawker food, family recipes, well-loved landmark dishes in Singapore like satay. Satay club. Chili crab from Bedok, and I'm old enough to remember all that because I was born before independence. I was born during British colonial times. I lived through that. So that British part is also represented. I have pineapple upside-down cake, for example. I still remember, as a teenager, going to New Year's Eve balls at the Cockpit Hotel and they would have Bombe Alaska. So those stories, I think, need to be told.



Bharati Jagdish: What sort of legacy would you like to leave behind?

Violet Oon: I suppose that I have been telling the Singapore story, and I'm so amazed that this has been recognised. I got this award recently, and it's all to do with telling the Singapore story. The food story. I'm a storyteller and recording Singapore food and flavours and tastes.