Singapore The City Of Firsts

Singapore, as a city of firsts, hosted the world's first F1 night race last year and is still the host city of the only F1 night race, making it one of the most exciting races in the season.
The race is complemented by the 10-day Singapore GP Season, offering lifestyle and entertainment experiences including all-night parties, art exhibitions, great Asian cuisine and retail promotions.

The F1 championship has entered its final stages where there is only 4 races left to go and things are really hotting up at the top of the Championship table.
But not only the race track will be hot. For the first time "F1 Rocks™" will fuse the world's most popular annual sporting series with the most iconic and hot music stars to create an unrivalled experience for F1 and music fans alike. "F1 ROCKS Singapore with LG" spans three days from September 24th-26th, adding to the uniquem F1 night-time grand prix weekend.

Thursday September 24th: Jacky Cheung - A Mei - Da Mouth

Friday September 25th: ZZ-Top - No Doubt - N*E*R*D


Saturday September 26th - Beyonce - Black Eyed Peas

It can't get any hotter

Since last weekend a lot of activities are already happening. Strolling along Orchard Road you already can feel the tension and excitement. Many stalls are set up with F1 merchandise items and here and there you're able to spot first fans dressed up in their favorite teams colors.

Traditional and Fusion (modern) Mooncakes

Mooncakes are Chinese pastries traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The festival is for lunar worship and moon watching; moon cakes are regarded as an indispensable delicacy on this occasion.

Mooncakes are offered between friends or on family gatherings while celebrating the festival, one of the three most important Chinese festivals.

Typical mooncakes are round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. A thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2-3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs.

Mooncakes are rich, heavy, and dense compared with most Western cakes and pastries. They are usually eaten in small wedges accompanied by Chinese tea.
Nowadays many hotel create a variety of "modern" mooncakes which come in many colors and fillings:
White Lotus Paste, Green Tea Lotus Paste, Pandan Lotus Paste

even Durian Paste
very colorful

Still our favorites are the ones from Raffles Hotel with fillings such as:Champagne-Truffles & Chocolate Ganache, Feulletine-Hazelnut with Wafer Crunch Nuts, Baileys Chocolate and Rum & Raisin Chocolate Truffle
Mooncakes with white skin are called Snow - Skin Mooncakes and are really delcious!!

Impressions from the Mid Autumn Festival

Beautifully decorated Eu Tong Sen Street

The Festival takes place in the Chinese Garden and Chinatown in Singapore.

Stalls selling all kind of lanterns

Singapore's largest recycled lantern, 5.3m tall, made from 6,000 used mineral water bottles and 2,000 compact discs.

Sweet pomelos
There are also other forms of cultural shows and performances singers, Chinese instrumentalists and others add to the excitement of the Mooncake festival. A huge crowd listening to stage performances in chinatown

This cute little girl is an excellent singer and of course loved by the people

and items such as traditional paper lanterns, decorations and other souvenirs


Erich is very busy every night

but there is always time for a chatt with his regulars

The mid autumn festival is on till October 3

It's Pomelo Time!

It's party time!
Finally the "gates of hell" are closed for another year and we're celebrating the mid autumn or lantern festival.

Lanterns are usually the highlight of this festival for the kids.
And the highlight for adults? You guessed right: It's gotta be food!!

Pomelo stalls are all over Chinatown..... ...and even Erich's Backstube for the first time is selling a local delicacy tied up to this festival: MOON CAKES!
You can buy them at his Backstube-Kiosk close to the Wuerstelstand.
To cater for the expected huge crowd Erich even increased the space of his stall.

It was Chocolate last year this year it's all Bread!

Maybe you remember last year's race car made of 90kg chocolate by the Chefs of Royal Paza on Scott's.

This year it's "Asia's First and Largest Life-sized Bread Race Car!"

The Culinary Executive Chef led a team of 6 chefs, 2 artists, 2 technicians, 2 culinary staff and 5 young volunteers from Metta Welfare Association to create this unique bread race car in support of Community Chest Singapore.
These are the 22 different breads used for the car:

Hard Roll-Curry Roll-Onion Roll-Ceral Rolls- Dark Sour Rye Bread- Country Bread- Soya Bread- French Baguette- Wholemeal Baguette- Sesame Kaiser Roll- Laugen Snadwich- Focaccia Bun- Rustico Baguette- Farmer Bread- Squid Ink Focaccia Bread- Swiss Farmer Bread- Soft Bun- Chinese Bun- Milano Grain- Ciabatta Bread, Honey Milk Bread,- Potato Bread
The team spent S$15,000 and took 549 hours to assemble the life-sized race car. They used a total of 15 kg of yeast, 14 litres of water, 2 kg of salt and 10800 ml of food varnish! The completed car is made up of 1,000 loaves!
Squid Ink Focaccia Bread was used for the tyres.


BREAD TORQUE! is raising funds for Metta School under the care of Community Chest. You can participate in doing a good deed through:
1) Purchasing the scale-model chocolate race cars, made of fine edible chocolate at Gourmet Carousel at S$29.90 each. Freshly-baked cookies, Turbo Choc Chip (Inside-out chocolate chip flavour) and Hot Wheels (Walnut flavour), are also available at S$2.80 each. S$5 from each sale of the scale-model chocolate race cars and S$1 from each sale of the cookies will be contributed to Metta School.
2) Purchasing a S$5 lucky draw ticket to take part in a charity drive for Metta School. There will be a draw on Wednesday, 23 September 2009, to pick the winner for the grand prize of a one-night stay in a newly-renovated Premiere Business Suite at RP, with breakfast for two, on Singapore Grand Prix weekend (26 – 27 September 2009) and a pair of walkabout 3-day pass for Singapore Grand Prix 2009, worth S$2,300. 3) Enjoying a sumptuous dinner at Gourmet Carousel as the hotel will donate S$2 for every adult dinner cover from 22 August to 19 September 2009.

Or you just go to view this amazing bread race car at "Royal Plaza On Scotts" lobby till 27 September 2009.

More photos at this Flickr photoset here.

Another Interview for Erich

German Radio ARD came the other day to record an interview with Erich and some of his customers.

Customers love Erich's bread

After some modifications in the Backstube, Erich's much appreciated, famous bread is back.

Semmeln, Onion Bun and Bretzeln are back, the dark bread is soon to come as well.

You can buy the bread at his Backstube which opens at 10 am every day. Kiosk Nr. 7 is located just two stalls next to the sausage kiosk.

Kaesekrainer, Currywurst, Leberkaese and sides daily from 3 pm at the sausage kiosk.