Heartlands Festival Arises With Aplomb With Eddy's Ultimate Food Challenge
This holiday season, rediscover your local neighbourhoods through key festival highlights in Singapore’s first Heartlands Festival 2021.
It’s a way of getting Singaporeans to celebrate the best of what our heartlands have to offer, and it starts with Eddy’s Ultimate Food Challenge, a timed eating contest featuring notable heartland hawkers and their signature dishes, which will be held across a few different zones across Singapore in different hawker centers. The first qualifying round was held on 18 December 2021 at Tanjong Pagar Food Center, where 6 participants took part in a competitive eating contest to finish 2kg worth of food from 3 different hawkers. The winner of the first round walked away with a $300 NETS FlashPay card, and move on to the finals taking place in 2022, for a chance to win a $500 NETS FlashPay Card and claim the title of Singapore's Ultimate Foodie.
"The whole point of the Ultimate Food Challenge and the multiple rounds is to not just showcase the number of zones available that sell great hawker food, but also because of safe-distancing issues, which required more consideration," said Mr Zermatt Neo, content creator and competitive eater. He happens to be one of the hosts for the qualifying rounds and will be one of the contenders the finalists would have to go against in the qualifying rounds.
A fan of local street food in Singapore, he's one of the bigger proponents of hawkers and the food they make, and is proud to throw his affiliation in with the Heartlands Festival. "To me, I promote hawker food through epic, massive eating." he says, sheepishly. "What we are missing when it comes to talking about hawker food is that we need to understand the hawkers a bit more, and understanding their stories and what drives them. People need to understand that, and sometimes when we are waiting in queues we can be a little bit frustrated, a little bit impatient, but I would say this whole hawker culture ties down to experience."
For the owner of Mad Bros SG , one of the hakwer stalls that contributed the food for the competitive eating, food is something that unites us all together. "I feel like the whole idea of this event is to bring hawkers and customers together, where a bridge now exists to stallholders getting to know their customers. I've had the pleasure of getting to know my customers, who are now my regulars. It's something that didn't happen before."
The first qualifying rounds led 6 people to eat food from 3 stalls within a time limit, and the first member that will be going to the finalist round is Benedict Long. There will be four more qualifying rounds in different regions of SIngapore before going against competitive eater Mr Zermatt Neo.
