The Singapore Food Festival will be held on May 26 and 27 at the Atrium of Saigon Centre in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1 to celebrate the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Singapore.

It follows the art competition in January 2018 jointly organized by the Consulate General of Singapore, the HCMC Union of Friendship Organizations (HUFO) and the General Sciences Library, which saw the participation of 100 students from primary and secondary schools.   

The food festival will feature 18 stalls by Singapore companies in HCMC, showcasing Singapore cuisine and particularly, hawker classics that are well known in Singapore.  

One of the Singapore dishes much loved among Vietnamese people is the famous frog porridge, known as “chao ech Singapore” in Vietnam.  

There will be many other dishes like chilli crab, chicken rice, laksa, chwee kueh, nasi lemak, otak otak and popiah that are testament to the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Singapore.  

A lot of Singapore’s street foods are named in the language of their origins such as nasi lemak which means “fatty rice” in Malay, while “chwee kueh” means “cake with water and rice flour” in the Teochew dialect.

“We are happy to bring a taste of Singapore to Vietnam through this food festival, which celebrates 45 years of diplomatic relations between Singapore and Vietnam.  This is the first time the Consulate General is organizing a food festival in the city.  Through this event, we hope to build stronger people-to-people ties and camaraderie among our peoples,” said Leow Siu Lin, Singaporean Consul General.

The diplomat added that the event will at the same time benefit underprivileged students in Vietnam as proceeds and contributions from Singapore companies at the food festival will go towards the Singapore Business Group’s “Edfund”, which has to date provided scholarships to more than 3,000 under-privileged students in and around HCMC since 2000.

Singapore Food Festival, taking place from 10:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., will bring participants an exciting weekend of performances and live food demonstrations with free food tasting. 

Particularly, the world’s first Michelin-star “street food” chef, Chef Chan, will be demonstrating how he prepares his famous soya sauce chicken rice.  

Relations between Vietnam and Singapore have grown across all fronts. The relations were elevated to a Strategic Partnership in September 2013. Singapore is the third largest foreign investor in Vietnam and the top investor in HCMC.

Saigon Times