When chilli crabs landed on London...

If you were at London's Brick Lane last weekend, what is now a painfully hip and chic area, the smell of something really familiar would have wafted up your nostrils - primarily that of chilli crabs. 

Not the first time this has been presented, last year's event saw over 7,000 people joining on the festivities at theTiger Beer Singapore Chilli Crab Festival and more than 2,000 portions of Chilli Crab were enjoyed. Visitors also partook of some 4,000 bottles of perfectly chilled Tiger Beer as well as other Singapore delights such as char kway teow and bur bur cha cha. Singapore celebrity chef Violet Oon also made an appearance, frying up more excitement at the event.

Certainly witnessing the immense popularity the event had this year, with queues snaking round buildings as both Londoners and Singaporeans away from home (ala, me) waited to get their hands on food from home, my other Singaporean friends casually noted that perhaps this is just the way to go about marketing Singapore. There is no doubt, after all, that Singapore is one hell of a food culture, one that sees a whole myriad of flavours blending, living together side by side at your nearest hawker centre.

And food, the most universal and most easily relatable aspect of life, is certainly an easy way to people's hearts all around the world. Using a dish such as chilli crabs too, a dish one can say without sarcarsm is indeed uniquely Singaporean, is a good a product to sell to the world because of the above listed qualities.

Sure, there are a lot of initiatives going on right now, Singapore Season in China for example which will happen later this month in Beijing and Shanghai (selling Singapore arts there from dance to music to theatre), but many of these pose cultural problems or barriers. The Singapore Chinese Orchestra's performance in the upcoming Singapore Season that's held in China has led some commentators to ask if we will be the laughing stock of China, in a land where Chinese orchestras as a dime a dozen. Not to say that our Chinese Orchestra is bad, but really, what is truly unique about us?

For now, chilli crabs has won my heart over for that question. With the slow but steady invasion of Singaporean restaurants in places around the world like London too (this year's Chilli Crab festival was helmed by talk of the town restaurant Kiasu, a restaurant offering Singaporean food that has won over London food critics), let our gastronomical imperialism of the world start now! Ok, just kidding. Burp.