Lately, there’s been a spotlight on ready-to-eat meals dispensed from vending machines in Singapore. Perhaps it’s the convenience of it all, or maybe it’s the thrill of it being rather new in the food scene — whatever it is, Singaporeans seem to love it, judging by the numbers that flocked to our country’s very first vending machine cafe in Sengkang when it opened last year.
Since then, we’ve seen vending machine cafes pop up at Ang Mo Kio and Lakeside MRT stations, with more to come. Although these machines have been doling out pizzas and sandwiches for a couple years now, hot food items are a novelty, and people have been intrigued, to say the least.
Anyway, it’s gotten to the point where we now have our very own VendFest. Yep, you heard right — us Singaporeans are also rather obsessed with food festivals — you can actually spend your weekend walking around a mall showcase of vending machines.
The week-long exhibition features nine food vending operators offering ready-to-eat dishes such as rice dumplings, pepperoni pizza, curry chicken, black pepper chicken, chicken bolognese, black pepper crab, Hawaiian pizza, Hokkien mee, nasi briyani and even chilli crab.
But before you scoff at the idea of a vending machine festival, we gotta admit — even the skeptic in us was pleasantly surprised by how good the dishes were (at least the ones we sampled). The fried carrot cake tasted like it was fresh out of a hawker’s wok, while the seafood hor fun retained its wok hei essence (smoky flavor from being stir-fried in a wok).
If you’re curious to try it out for yourself (and why not), head over to the atrium of Tampines 1 mall from now till July 27 to check out the selection of hot food from the likes of Saybons, JR Vending, U-Market Place, House of Seafood, Shiok Pizza, Singapore Chilli Crab, Fastflex, Foodbox and Juicy Fresh.
