COVID-19: Restaurant chefs lead community kitchen with volunteers to prepare meals for Singapore's migrant workers

SINGAPORE – Many of Singapore’s top restaurant chefs including Daniel Sia (The Lo & Behold Group) and Damian D’Silva (Kin Restaurant) are leading a community kitchen with support from a team of volunteers from the Straits Clan team to prepare 450 meals per day for migrant workers.

Migrant workers comprise the largest community in Singapore with the most urgent need for food support due to the impact of COVID-19. The workers that this community kitchen will feed are currently housed in Goldmine Energy Tuas factory-converted dormitory.

Named the Straits Clan Community Kitchen, its volunteer operations are funded by donations to the #HomeForAll campaign, received by the Collective of Migrant Efforts (COME), a part of Hope Initiative Alliance (HIA) which is a registered charity in Singapore. Donations are used to purchase ingredients for the 450 meals which will be prepared daily for a week from today (7 April) until 4 May.

Other chefs from The Lo & Behold Group who are contributing include Julien Royer (Odette), Keirin Buck (Le Bon Funk) and Shigeru Koizumi (Esora) – and the wider Singapore F&B community such as chefs Jason Tan (prev. Corner House), Annette Tan (FatFuku), Willin Low (Relish, Roketto), LG Han (Labyrinth) and Rishi Naleendra (Cloudstreet, Cheek Bistro) – who are kindly sharing recipes and expertise.

The meals are prepared with balanced nutrition and comforting, familiar tastes to bring comfort to the migrant workers. Each meal prepped costs no more than S$2, which follows the budget set by the government in order to qualify meal supplies for funding. Straits Clan Community Kitchen worked with a partner, Ugly Food, a sustainable company that aims to reduce food wastage in supply chains to make this happen.

For more information, visit the Straits Clan Community Kitchen page here.