Rosette Media
- Oct 14, 2023
- 3 min read

Kita Food Festival 2023, featuring Restaurant Fiz

Updated: Oct 26, 2023

We went for an exclusive lunch at Restaurant Fiz as part of the auspices for the Kita Food Festival Singapore Weekender event with special guest Chef Hafiz from Fiz restaurant .

The Kita Food Festival Singapore Weekender event will be held from October 19th -23rd and will be a series of four and six-hand fine dining dinners with some of the best Michelin and Asia's 50 Best Chefs and food thought leaders from around the world along with a Sunday BBQ event and Kita Conversations. Chef Hafiz and Chef Ivan will talk about the inspiration behind the Kita Food Festival, what guests can expect over the weekend, the lineup of world-class chefs and what culinary delights will be enjoyed.

Our focus today is on Restaurant Fiz and as part of the Kita Food Festival, we were super thrilled when we were invited to partake of its culinary goodness. Restaurant Fiz on 21 Tanjong Pagar Road is a tasting menu-only restaurant that opened in June 2023 that serves contemporary Southeast Asian cuisine. It sets out to be purposefully vast in its scope, sweeping across food cultures from the ancient steps of Angkor Wat to the lush highland valleys of Sarawak, and we can feel this depiction around the walls of their decor, their culinary menu and expression, and the vibes permeating throughout the walls of this venue!

This approach is Chef-Owner Hafizzul Hashim's opus to the boundless beauty of the region after having spent two decades working across the world in Michelin-starred restaurants and beyond. He draws from the knowledge of societies past and present, funnelled through a series of menus that convey the warmth and comfort of communal dining. The result is a contemporary gastronomic oeuvre experienced in a thoughtful space inspired by the architectural features found in places of faith around Southeast Asia.

Having spent over 20 years working in kitchens in Kuala Lumpur, London, Tokyo, Ho Chi Minh and now Singapore, and sharpening his knives in Michelin-starred kitchens like Mirabelle and Chez Bruce as well as Jean Georges in Tokyo, Chef Hafizzel turns to Southeast Asian cuisine after an illustrious international career.

Chef-Owner Hafizzul Hashim harnesses ancient knowledge as the springboard to his cuisine. The restaurant represents the region's diversity with changing menus known as "Episodes" that spotlight the geocultural entities that call Southeast Asia home. Each dish is the result of extensive research into the history and foodways of Southeast Asia, with flavours and techniques gleaned from across the culinary landscape. This includes the revered palaces of Thailand and Malaysia, ancient manuscripts, as well as chef Hafizzul's own family recipes.

To honour the local nature of the cuisine, chef Hafizzul wields forgotten ingredients with a confident hand and works with small growers of heirloom varieties while paying respect to terroir. He relies deeply on "air tangan" a Malay phrase which means "water from the hand", where food is cooked with instinct, finesse, and heart, having grown up from around the Lumut area; this instinctive background lends finesse to his humble culinary beginnings and training, as a chef.

We sampled a diversity of his culinary expression... the menu is inspired by the memories of his childhood growing up in Lumut, that was the only place he knew as home and is where his love affair with food began; it is his intention to share a different perspective on some of his favourite everyday dishes with our lunch experience today.