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Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck tours Little India, eats at Tekka Centre & Banana Leaf Apolo
Tekka Centre is the place to be to eat and buy fresh produce.
October 14, 2024, 04:20 PM
Chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck was spotted on a culinary tour of Singapore's hawker delights, feasting on local favourites, such as egg prata at Tekka Centre and fish head curry at Banana Leaf Apolo.
Puck owns Cut by Wolfgang Puck, a one Michelin star steakhouse at The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands.
Singaporean food influencer Veronica Phua posted a two-part series on Instagram reels, as well as several stories of Wolfgang touring Tekka Market, smelling ingredients and dining at the bustling hawker centre.
He was joined by other celebrity chefs such as Byron Puck, Daniel Boulud, and Jeans Georges Vonderichton, as well as restaurateur Simon Kim.
The chefs were in Singapore for the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix weekend.
In the first part of the series, the chefs could be seen traversing Tekka's Wet Market, picking out ingredients that piqued their interest at the dried goods section.
Amongst the ingredients were buah keluak, an essential ingredient in Peranakan cuisine, and belachan, said Phua in her caption.
The stall was also where Spago executive chef Greg Bess gets his supply from.
They then visited a stall specialising in soya bean products.
"The friendly lady manning the stall shared an interesting fact that in the old days, those beansprout skins were not discarded but used to fill pillows for babies – it was believed to help them sleep better," Phua shared.
The chefs then toured the butcher section, where fresh meat and seafood where laid out for sale.
"The chefs were curious and asked questions about the various fish, and got into a discussion amongst themselves," said Phua.
Ate with their hands
In the second part of the Instagram series, the chefs dug into local fare local-style – ripping off pieces of prata and dipping them into curry with their hands.
Phua said the group grabbed chendol drinks, seated themselves at a table, and bought food from an assortment of hawker stalls around Tekka Centre.
They feasted on egg prata, which the group had never tried before, thosai and samosas as "appetisers", attacking the food with gusto.
They then attended their reservation at The Banana Leaf Apolo, where they ate fish head curry, chicken liver curry, dry-stile fried chicken 65, mutton roganjosh and lanb shank.
Banana Leaf Apolo's head chef Kumaresan Gokulanathan came out of the kitchen to greet his celebrity counterparts.
Came in 2022
This isn't the first time Puck has been to Singapore to savour the culinary delights.
In 2022, Wolfgang visited Singapore to attend Milken Institute's Asia Summit and the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.
Back then, he visited Chinatown complex, where he made fresh yong tau foo, ate carrot cake, Hokkien mee, satay, nasi padang, soy sauce chicken and other local delicacies.
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Top photo via veronicaphua/Instagram
