Malaysian celebrity Chef Wan is a household name for the Malay community here, so it was not too long before someone decided to take advantage of his popularity by launching a restaurant that carried his name.
And thus 1 Market by Chef Wan arrived at Plaza Singapura in November 2012, all hyped up as a 450-seater Halal buffet restaurant offering a massive spread of the chef’s famous Asian recipes.
That hype, however, quickly died down when patrons discovered that the quality of its fare were pretty meh. Folks also started to realise that Chef Wan didn’t even own or run the restaurant — he merely allowed them to use his name and provided them with pointers and advice every now and then.
As time went on, it became pretty clear that 1 Market just didn’t give a damn anymore about actually being a decent eatery. Bad service, mediocre food, disgusting upkeep — all of which made foodies stay far away from the buffet restaurant.
After years of getting pummelled by indifference and furious reviews, 1 Market closed down earlier this week without much notice after their contract at Plaza Singapura ended.
Now that it’s shuttered, Chef Wan himself has spoken out about the shitty operations of the restaurant. His anger is well-deserved of course; after all, it’s his name that was tarnished due to the substandard quality.
“You can just see the messy quality of operations and how the food and recipes weren’t what I taught them,” Chef Wan said in an interview with Berita Harian. “Even the chefs just do as they please. When I heard about all that, of course I was livid”.
He added that he wasn’t invited back to the restaurant to develop new recipes for about 10 months, stating that the problems with the management were apparent in the quality of food.
A big issue a t1 Market was the massive wastage of food, he said, and that added to the cost of operations. Plus, there was the fact that the 450-seater restaurant was pretty huge, and running the place wasn’t cheap at all.
Despite his disappointment in the closing of the restaurant, Chef Wan was happy that it was launched in the first place, as it gave him the opportunity to mingle with his fans in Singapore. If given the chance to open another restaurant here, he plans for it to serve traditional Malay cuisine.
