Bino

It’s hard to imagine that Araya, the Chilean restaurant in Mondrian Singapore Duxton, opened just a few months ago in Q4 2023. In that short span of time, it has been making waves in the city’s dining scene with stellar reviews for its South American coastal cuisine.

Araya is located in the dining complex of Mondrian Singapore Duxton that includes Noa Lounge, Suzuki Omakase and Tribal Dining. 

The restaurant, which is helmed by Chefs Francisco Araya and Fernanda Guerrero, has recently launched a new degustation menu, the Costa (S$368) which is a celebration of all things seafood. The idea of a marine-centric menu seems quite apt since Chile boasts a long 6,437km Pacific coastline. 

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Dumpling Festival 2024, also known as Dragonboat Festival or Duan Wu Jie (端午节) in Chinese, will occur on the 10th of June 2024 – the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Although the Dumpling Festival is not a public holiday in Singapore, this is the time that families and friends come together to enjoy exquisitely handmade sticky rice dumplings or zongzi (粽子) or bak chang in the Hokkien dialect. Traditionally, there are 3 types of rice dumplings: 

• Nyonya – Often has a blue tip. The interior features minced meat.
• Hokkien – Juicier than the Nyonya rice dumpling due to the presence of pork belly brimming with fat. The juices get absorbed by the rice.
• Sweet – Filled with various beans, nuts, dates or simply just the sticky rice and nothing else. Also called kee chang. Vegetarian-friendly.

If you were to choose to buy your rice dumplings from hotels and Chinese restaurants, expect luxurious ingredients such as scallops, abalone and even duck. This year, a couple of outlets have introduced some unique flavors. Many of the bak chang listed below for Dumpling Festival 2024 are available not just for takeaway but also for delivery. Here is a list of the best rice dumplings being sold this year.

You can also join our newly-launched telegram channel here and receive updates on F&B promotions as well as other flash deals and offers in F&B and travel.

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Cassia, the Chinese restaurant in Capella Singapore, has updated its menu with a number of new dishes. I personally find Cassia to be one of the most underrated Chinese restaurants in Singapore. A venue that’s located inside Sentosa does not have a big captive audience to depend on so it is paramount for the cuisine to stand out in order to convince people to come all the way.

By that measure, Cassia does not disappoint. The Chinese restaurant has a decent number of loyal customers and even during some weeknights, one finds a good crowd within its premises. I have personally been to Cassia around 4 times now and the food has remained consistently excellent, no matter which chef is helming the kitchen.

 The current chef, Alan Chan, is known in Singapore’s culinary circles for having brought a Michelin star to Four Seasons Singapore’s Jiang Nan Chun, whose kitchen he helmed for 6 years until 2021. At Cassia, he brings the same magic – utilizing his skills with age-old techniques in Cantonese cuisine and melding them with more modern ones. 

Here are some of the new dishes to expect in Cassia in 2024:

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Maxwell Food Centre is one of those rare hawker centers in Singapore that is highly popular with tourists and at the same time, is held in high esteem by locals for its authentic and traditional hawker dishes. The main reason for this is that Maxwell Food Centre is the current home of a myriad of age-old street stalls that originally plied the area around China Square (now part of the CBD). Many of these establishments have been around for 80 years or more and continue to be managed by the same family, albeit the 2nd or 3rd generation. 

Other than that, patrons can find quite a number of relatively rare hawker dishes here such as Fuzhou-style oyster cake, peanut pancake and more and at any given day, one can find Singaporeans from near and far descending upon this humble-looking hawker center queueing for various specialties.

Personally, Maxwell Food Centre is one of my most frequently-visited hawker centers in Singapore as I enjoy walking to this place during my lunch hour whenever I am looking to clock in more steps. My favorites here are a mix of some of the original China Square hawker stalls as well as newer ones started by enterprising youngsters.

However, it remains to be one of the more challenging hawker centres for me to write about due to their relatively high turnover. This is one of Singapore’s OG hawker centres and a number of the original stalls have closed permanently due to the retirement of the owners. New concepts have sprouted to replace them, with varying degrees of success.

Without further ado, here are some of the food you should try the next time you find yourself at Maxwell Food Centre.

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Min Jiang at Dempsey is commemorating 5 years since it opened in its Dempsey Hill location back in 2019. I reviewed it back then when they first opened and loved their creatively concocted dishes. Many of the specialties that they presented at the time are still available today such as the Turbot and Gold Fish Dumpling. From now until 31st May, they are also presenting an ensemble of 5 new dishes for their anniversary. 

The 5 dishes all contain elements of egg in them and can be ordered as ala carte or as a set for S$138++ per person. During my most recent visit to Min Jiang at Dempsey, I tried the set menu.

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Chinatown Complex Food Centre is one of the largest hawker centers in Singapore, boasting over 260 stalls. Chinatown Complex is well-known among Singaporeans and residents from all over the island would make the long trip here to shop at the wet market in the basement and to purchase their meals from the plethora of stalls upstairs. You can practically find the entire gamut of Singapore hawker food here and more – from Michelin-starred joints to increasingly rare traditional snacks. 

Chinatown Complex Food Centre is personally one of my most frequently visited hawker centers. I just love the wide choices of good food here and getting to try some rare dishes adds an exotic factor to one’s foodie exploration. 

Without further ado, here are the things you must eat (and drink!) the next time you find yourself at Chinatown Complex Food Centre. The stalls listed here are not arranged in particular order and you’d probably need to make multiple visits to try all of them.

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