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ShareI wrote about the Singapore World Gourmet Summit (WGS) last time around and have just finished with the 2009 edition. Here are the things that make Singapore our culinary and gastronomic superior by leaps and bounds.
1. The food and wine events that were hosted under the WGS were for general public and not just for the reserved few who happen to know the hotel GMs and other luminaries of the city. People can read about a wine class and just walk in. The media comes to learn from the visiting chefs and winemakers and share it with their readers, not just to click pictures of the floozy page-3 shamsters.
2. People pay to attend. This is also why no page 3 types are to be seen. The glam set, and Indians in general, are too used to having freebies and hence never take wine seriously enough to learn something useful about it. The only thing we seem to know is to tank up at a free soiree like a much needed pit stop.
3. The one thing they are particular about is their intention to deliver a complete dining experience. Food here is serious matter, not just something to stuff our faces with. The chefs help a lot in selling a cuisine and educating people about it. This, in turn, helps wine pairing awareness become a more embedded part of an outing.
4. The wines are about the same price here as in India but given the higher standard of living, they are in fact much cheaper. The system encourages people to regard drinking as a pleasant social activity rather than a social taboo confined for political and personal gains, as seems to be the case in India.
5. The multitude of wine events being held in Singapore makes it a Mecca for wine learning. From experiments with wine and scotch to drinks as diverse as cherry brandy, they know how to keep attentions peaked. Even the Formula 1 race (the only night city race of its kind) has a plethora of high-end wine and food events preceding the flag-off.
6. A good public transport! Unbelievable as this may sound, to promote a healthy drinking environment, it is very important to have this. People who are not vexed about getting behind the wheel of a car will be more at ease when killing some grey cells with a good bottle from 1982.
7. A government that governs instead of mothering would be a welcome change in India. With laws allowing for alcohol to be served sans legal tangles, Singapore makes the process of putting together an event a lot easier. I would love to organise a gourmet summit in India but I can see the horror when a visiting chef's prized mushrooms and steaks are held up at customs and the wine is seized by excise for something stupidly and legally inane and Indian.
8. I will cause physical harm to the next person who suggests that Indians don't care about what they eat or drink. In a country with more than a dozen cuisines and a taste for the finer things, the only thing that impedes us from letting out our true inner gourmand is the prices. Hotels and restaurants with their obscene margins are culpable for killing all sense of enjoyment that a casual outing for food and a drink could ever hold.
Once this can be set right, we shouldn't be too far from the Singapore of the '90s. From our mothers to our government nobody wants us to drink or eat or enjoy really. The only people who don't seem to mind us eating and drinking sadly, are the cops!
The writer is a sommelier.
