Sometimes the detour makes the tour. Rather than following the prescribed plan, we slipped into the kitchens of Singapore's leading hotels where some of the world's most-celebrated chefs were churning out masterpieces for the well-heeled masses.

The chefs were here for the World Gourmet Summit, the region's premier food festival, which boasts more lavish dinners, wine tastings, malt samplings, cooking classes and oddball celebrity banquets than any other confab in Southeast Asia.

In its 10th year, the World Gourmet Summit attracted the likes of three-star Michelin chefs Philippe Legendre of Le Cinq in Paris and Santi Santamaria of Can Fabes in Spain.

There were 18 chefs in all, if you counted the six representing Alain Ducasse, the world's only toque to run three restaurants ranking three Michelin stars each in three different countries.

The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) wanted to showcase its local talent and took us to none of their dinners, so we jumped ship and went trolling on our own.

We sampled creations by one-star chefs Gennaro Esposito of Naples, Italy, and Paco Roncero of Madrid, Spain. And we stole a few precious moments from Peter Knipp, the imposing Teutonic chef who founded the World Gourmet Summit, jointly organised by his Peter Knipp Holdings and the STB.

"The World Gourmet Summit is in continuous evolution," Knipp said. "So you constantly see new events, activities and new trends, such as a movement away from large events to more customised affairs."

While the sold-out Macallan malt tasting hosted just 80 people, many of the events were still huge, such as the banquet featuring Discovery Travel & Living channel's celebrity "Globe Trekker" Ian Wright.

That dinner seated 320 people, each paying S$168 (Bt4,000) to dine on Wright's exotic "The Food I Like". While Wright may roam the planet for his television series, his favourite foods are clearly anchored at home - fish 'n' chips, roast beef sirloin and Yorkshire pudding. His speech was as uninspiring as his palate.

"I'm a victim - free food, travel and sacks of money," he quipped before launching into a litany of culinary clichés. American fast food is lousy, delicious bowls of noodles are available everywhere in Southeast Asia, fried cockroaches are sold in Cambodia (yuck!), but they'd probably be scrumptious if served in a pate.

Bottom feeders like Wright don't faze Knipp, who says his festival caters to the entire Singapore community. Indeed, Wright's dinner was sold out.

"We have something for everybody," Knipp noted, adding that food festivals throughout Southeast Asia, including Bangkok's World Gourmet Festival, were born from the success of Singapore's gourmet summit.

Singapore's food fest is massive. This year, it offered scores of events featuring a bewildering line-up of "master chefs", "guest chefs", "iconic chefs" and "celebrity personalities". In exchange for support, it plugged 50 partners.

Bangkok's food fest is held at one location, the Four Seasons Bangkok, and is smaller since it has fewer sponsors and fewer kitchens. It's a much more intimate affair with all the chefs cooking, sleeping and drinking together at one hotel. The Epicurean Masters of the World, which premiered earlier this year at The Dome in Bangkok's State Tower, also was at one site.

But if you were in Singapore from April 10 to 18, you could enjoy vintner dinners, tastings and master classes hosted by six leading Old World vineyards. And you could sample creations by Michelin-star chefs Antonin Bonnet of the Greenhouse in London, Kevin Thornton of Thornton's in Dublin and Laurent Tourondel of BLT in New York. (Thornton cooked at the Grand Hyatt Erawan just before the World Gourmet Summit. Tourondel was at Bangkok's World Gourmet Festival late last year; he opted out of the Singapore event at the last minute, sending his top-ranked team in his stead.)

We visited Paco Roncero, the leading disciple of Ferran Adria, regarded by many as the most creative chef in the world. (Adria spends six months of each year creating new dishes for his restaurant, El Bulli, in Rosas-Gerona, Spain.) Roncero trained three years at El Bulli before taking over the kitchen at La Terraza del Casino in Madrid, a restaurant that melds innovative and traditional cuisine.

When we arrived, Roncero had just completed one dish in his 11-course tapas menu that he was serving at The Oriental Singapore. (In Madrid, he serves 25 tiny courses at each seating.)

He had just made Parmesan spaghetti by boiling the cheese with agar agar and squirting the translucent mixture through a syringe into chilled water. Each wheat-coloured strand measured two metres in length. Just before service, the "pasta" was sprinkled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon peel and black pepper.

"Try sucking the entire piece without using a fork or spoon," Roncero suggested.

With one long slurp, the entire platter of Parmesan pasta disappeared. The taste was rich, rounded, nutty and salty - pure parmigiano-reggiano with a hint of dressing.

Roncero invited us into the kitchen to try the mozzarella spheres his cooks were making. Each tiny ball had a liquid centre. Bite into the soft sphere and the cold mozzarella juice bursts into your mouth with a mild, sweet, creamy taste.

"If you know how to do traditional food, you can do creative food," said Roncero, who holds one Michelin star and experiments with food in his kitchen laboratory. "When you work every day in the kitchen, you know agar agar and you know your equipment. You start to think, 'What can I do with this stuff'?"

Across town, at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel, a happy traditionalist was in residence. Gennaro Esposito, of Torre de Saracino in Naples, cooks southern Italian food stressing the tastes and textures of his ingredients.

"My goal is to give a taste of southern Italy," said Esposito. "Tradition is important, although I try some modernity in my cooking - new techniques, new designs. But I don't want to change the natural flavour of the product."

Packed in Esposito's bags were three small vials of colatura, a fish sauce made from anchovies fermented with salt, which he sprinkled on his swordfish ravioli.

The swordfish actually was the ravioli, encasing chopped vegetables - escarole, asparagus, celery, green beans, pepper - that had been cooked separately and mixed with parsley and rosemary. The ravioli was topped with crisp, grilled artichokes, browned shallots and a tower of micro-greens. At the base was a sprinkling of pine nuts, olives and sun-dried tomatoes. The appetiser was packed with layers of flavour and contrasting textures - sweet raisins and tomatoes, tart green olives, tender fish, crisp artichokes.

Esposito next served a saffron-and-citrus risotto with a sensual chewiness and a bright, yellow sauce full of citrus aromas.

He followed with a platter of tiny potato gnocchi arranged with clams and broccoli like a jigsaw puzzle. The gnocchi, practically weightless, and the clams, with a hint of the sea, were kissed by an aromatic lemon sauce.

We were sated, but Esposito prepared a plate of raw and cooked Italian sea bass. The soft, succulent raw fish was paired with crisp asparagus. The pan-fried bass was matched with an egg-battered, fried artichoke. Again there was a hint of citrus to carry the Mediterranean theme.

We sampled a fruit puff with yoghurt ice cream and millefeuilles stuffed with hazelnut filling.

But, at this juncture, it was time to surrender to the World Gourmet Summit and bid adieu. Eighteen days of this decadence would have been suicide.

Hal Lipper

The Nation

SINGAPORE