Barbecue restaurants, more homophobic drama and the best new way to get to JB—read on for a quick round-up of the city’s burgeoning (and dying) trends.
We have entered the age of barbecue, with smoky dude-food joints like Decker Barbecue, Seorae Galmaegi and Red Eye Smokehouse firing up charcoal pits here with well-cooked meats in recent months. But on the other end of the food spectrum, freshwater fish are now banned in all ready-to-eat raw fish dishes after an outbreak of Group B Streptococcus (GBS) infections linked to the consumption of raw freshwater fish. Recent reports suggest that restaurants are opting to replace raw fish and sashimi in yu sheng with cooked alternatives like abalone and smoked salmon.
There’s been some encouraging openness when it comes to exploring controversial themes like homosexuality and sexism, with art and stage productions like “When Bitch Meets Butch” at the M1 Fringe Festival and Toy Factory’s “Grind” touching on these issues. What’s not so cool is another tedious post by anti-LGBT group “We are Against Pink Dot in Singapore” proclaiming that Madonna’s Singapore concert will “corrupt more of our people, our young people and harm society”.
Good news for those who commute regularly between Johor Bahru and Singapore—there are now more train trips for Shuttle Tebrau, which travels to and from JB Sentral and Woodlands. A total of 22 trips are scheduled daily, with 12 trips to Woodlands and 10 trips going towards JB Sentral. Hopefully, this will ease the pain punishing causeway congestions, which can take hours to clear.
We can’t wait to check out a series of exciting arts festivals happening this month, like Art Stage and the Singapore Contemporary Art Show. But a recent uproar on social media about a speech by Professor Chang Heng Chee (chairman of the National Arts Council), who said that standards are often determined by the state while addressing the issue of censorship and arts funding, shows that the freedom of expression for artists in Singapore is still very much a thorny topic.
The Dempsey cluster has been buzzing with the opening of the newly revamped Loewen Road, a lifestyle and arts cluster featuring a spa, a yoga and pilates studio and even a luxury pet hotel. And just last month, it was announced that there will be several new F&B outlets including a restaurant by Jean-Georges Vongerichten and also Singapore’s first Dover Street Market store. In sadder news, the colorful 39-year-old Rochor Centre will be demolished soon to make way for the new North-South Expressway and joining it is the soon-to-be-gone Sungei Road Thieves Market, due to the construction of Sungei Road MRT. For more on the market’s colorful vendors and characters, head here.
