Chef Of Fab Southeast Asian Fine-Diner Fiz Offers $35 Buffet At Swensen’s Unlimited

Available now through April 30, the collaboration lets diners try recipes inspired by the chef’s childhood and family cooking traditions as part of the restaurant’s regular all-you-can-eat spread, starting at $35 per adult for weekday lunch.

As a rough comparison, a 11-course meal personally cooked by chef Haffizul at Restaurant Fiz starts from $228 (there are à la carte options available too).

Recipes inspired by his granny

For Hafizzul, the dishes are deeply personal. The 43-year-old chef grew up in Lumut, a coastal town in Perak, Malaysia, where cooking and eating were central to family life.

“My favourite memories were snacking on the food while she was still cooking to taste the progression of flavours,” he says, recalling time spent in the kitchen with his grandmother. “I would kaypoh in the kitchen and help her out.”

Despite his fine-dining pedigree, Haffizul says many of the flavours that shape his cooking still come from his beloved grandmother’s kitchen.
 
Malay cooking, he explains, has long been shaped by different cultural influences across Southeast Asia. In older kampong communities, families often relied on ingredients they grow, forage or catch themselves. Meals were cooked in large batches and shared among relatives and neighbours.

“As the local culture and dishes are getting lost in Singaporean history and culture, I want to embody that in my cooking and shine the spotlight on them through these dishes,” he says.

What to expect

There are about 10 dishes in the buffet conceptualised by chef Haffizul. The rest comprises the Swensen’s usual spread.

Prices start from $35 per person for weekday lunch and $38 per adult for dinner Monday to Thursday. Weekend lunch is $50 each, while dinner on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday costs $60. The weekend pricing also applies on the eve of public holidays and on special occasions.

One highlight is the Gulai Lemak Belinjau Leaves & Mussels. The dish balances slightly bitter belinjau leaves with coconut milk and seafood, resulting in a curry that is both rich and aromatic.

Another dish he recommends is Ikan Goreng Masak Acar Berlada. The preparation of fried seabass uses pickled vegetables and peppery spices, reflecting older cooking traditions that predate the widespread use of chillies in the region.

Hafizzul is also excited about the Smoked Duck & Jack Fruit Kalio. Duck is rarely used in traditional Malay home cooking in Singapore, so this dish offers a different take of the classic kalio, a dish with roots from Indonesia that sits somewhere between gulai (curry) and rendang.

He also included comforting dishes such as Lodeh Putih with Prawns, a coconut milk-based vegetable stew with shellfish that he remembers eating while growing up.

The salmon coulibiac (think Russian salmon Wellington) gets a bold twist here, with the pastry filled not just with salmon, but punchy Southeast Asian flavours like sambal and turmeric leaf.

Cooking at a large scale quite the challenge

Translating home-style recipes into a buffet format wasn’t a walk in the park.

“The most challenging aspect was that the dishes would be cooked by different chefs and at different [Swensen’s] outlet locations with different tastebuds and consistency,” Hafizzul says.

One dish that required careful calibration was the Asam Pedas Daging Tetel, a sour and spicy beef stew made with beef trimmings and assam. According to him, the dish needs a delicate balance of sourness, spice and herbaceous notes.

“We needed to make sure the cooking methods stayed the same and that the flavours did not become too simple or diluted,” he explains.

Chef Haffizul’s dishes are available till April 30 at all three Swensen’s Unlimited outlets in Singapore. More info via website.

Photos: Swensen’s Unlimited