There are no celebrity chefs, TV cameras, or even food processors at Food Playground. Instead, stay-at-home moms and seniors show up to help out in the kitchen. Thus, the cooking classes offer visiting groups a more local and familial team-building experience. No one learns how to be a gourmet chef. Instead, groups learn to collaborate by cooking Singapore’s famous street food.
“We’re very different from the typical cooking school you see in Singapore,” explains Daniel Tan, managing director of Food Playground. “We see ourselves more as a hands-on cultural exchange venue. We don’t attract people interested only in learning how to cook local cuisine. Many of our customers come because they are interested to learn more about Singapore through our food heritage and culture.”
Just the physical location—upstairs above preserved colonial storefronts near the colorful chaos of Chinatown—immediately provides an authentic flavor. Once inside, soothing music music emanates, tea is consumed and everyone becomes family. Groups get a sense of local history, architecture and food before they even start the class.
“Our location is yet another important differentiating factor,” Tan says. “We have specifically chosen to operate inside a pre-war restored shophouse in the Duxton neighborhood to enhance the experience. This gives us lots of talking points to share the interesting history of shophouses as well as the conservation efforts by our government to retain important parts of Singapore’s history and heritage.”
If anyone on the team harbors resentments, they are given the opportunity to “remove those resentments” via the mortar and pestle. No one puts anything into a food processor. A mortar and pestle can be a “pounding” workout, but the pastes always taste better when made that way. Groups learn that a time-consuming activity can be worth the trouble.
From beginning to end, the whole shebang includes several components. A 30-minute intro on Singapore food heritage and culture opens up the experience, followed by a 10-minute intro on local ingredients. The hands-on cooking class lasts about two hours, after which everyone eats and shares their emotions.
“We want visitors to our cooking school to walk away not only knowing more about Singapore food culture and heritage but also with more motivation and courage to try out local cuisine,” Tan says.
