Adding value to what we have

Food, glorious food.

According to celebrity TV host Anthony Bourdain, food brings people together.

I met Bourdain who is also the author of Kitchen Confidential, Bone in the Throat and A Cook’s Tour at the recently concluded World Street Food Congress in Singapore.

Food not only brings people together, but it is also a way for countries to be visible on the world map. The inaugural World Street Food Congress (WSFC) in Singapore is a case in point. Singapore is a country that has been attracting not just top talent from all over the world but also visitors attending a myriad of conferences and seminars. And the WSFC is a good example of how a great idea from something that is so simple yet resonates well with people -- street food, if developed well and implemented brilliantly will not only attract world’s attention but will also bring big bucks for the organisers and country.

Organized by Makansutra, an organisation founded by Singapore’s celebrity KF Seetoh and supported by the Singapore Tourism Board, the WSFC is believed to have attracted some 5,000 visitors to Singapore’s F1 Pit Building and Paddock.

It is not difficult to understand why many people flocked to the WSFC as it offered the opportunity for visitors to taste the more than 40 different dishes from 10 different countries – A Food Jamboree. I enjoyed the delicious Nasi Kapao of Indonesia.

In addition to the Food Jamboree, there were dialogues on street food, entertainment and the chance for photo opportunity with “food celebrities’ like Anthony Bourdain, Indonesia’s culinary ambassador William Wongso and many more.

But what intrigued me most was the ability to bring street food to a world platform – this is what innovation and creativity is all about.

I said to myself, in Malaysia, we have a lot of things that we can push to the world stage. We can have a world congress on Satay or Batik or Songket or Zapin. Again, it is all about innovation and creativity and being exceptionally brilliant in packaging and marketing and of course funding and leadership. Makansutra was good in making WSFC a world class event.

It is all about looking around us, see what we have and what we can raise to a “world level”.

May be soon we can all be proud of a World Satay Jamboree? World Songket Conference?

If people in Singapore can do it, surely we can… Kan Malaysia Boleh?