First off, the criteria posed by the three judges was that they wanted nothing short of a feast to cap off the first season finale. With both competitors delivering somewhat tame barbs to each other in restrained reality TV fashion, we can immediately say that the entire decision-making process, to us as viewers, was a disappointment.

To give a quick recap, Zander served up a five-course meal that would not look out of place in a mid-priced restaurant, with flank steak and chimichurri (a parsley based sauce), Sichuan peppercorn carbonara, red snapper in a lemongrass beurre blanc (basically a butter based sauce), a fennel soy salad, and a so-called ondeh ondeh panna cotta.

Now, right off the bat, we see that the meal the judges chose to award the win to had far more European and South American influences than anything Asian.

Consider the chimichurri, a sauce with an Argentinian origin, or the beurre blanc, a completely French invention. Carbonara hails from Rome, and so does the panna cotta. If anything, the only dish that would be clearly Asian might be the fennel salad, with the inclusion of soy sauce, and the fact that fennel is widely used in Syrian, Lebanese, and Middle Eastern cuisine.

To quote Zander himself, he felt that his meal was representative of the food available in Singapore.

There is certainly some truth in this, in that one would be able to find a meal of that particular style in Singapore. But representative of our wider culture it is not.

Flank steak would not be a meat that a decent portion of the population would be able to eat due to their religious dietary restrictions, and that is pretty much a microcosm of the entire issue at hand. The various courses would not be even elevated versions of what the average Singaporean might eat on a regular basis.

The same can be said for Gen’s meal, although her meal of duck confit, clam mornay, roasted eggplant, tabbouleh salad, and fig mochi dessert would definitely come closer to being more representative of Asia—though only slightly.

Duck confit hails from France, as does mornay sauce. The roasted eggplant might be a little more representative, along with the inclusion of everyone’s favorite Szechuan peppercorn. The tabbouleh salad would certainly qualify as Asian in the sense that the Middle East is a part of the Asian continent, as would the fig mochi (which allegedly tasted like nian gao) and mascarpone ice-cream dessert. Japan has a rather notable fondness for cheeses, and the Hokkaido region is famed for their dairy products.

But again, these dishes are not what the average Singaporean might encounter on a regular basis, although going by the only criterion provided by the judges, that being that the meal had to be Asian inspired, Gen’s meal certainly came closer in terms of fulfilling it.